Judeo-Spanish Ballads from New York: Collected by Mair Jose Bernardete

By Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman

In New York City during the winter of 1922 and the spring of 1923, Mair Jose Benardete recorded the texts of the thirty-nine traditional ballads published in this volume. His collection, the beginning of Judeo-Spanish ballad research in America, was assembled when the oral tradition was still rich and vigorous among immigrants to New York from the Sephardic settlements of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. Among the ballads are a number of rare text types, some never again recorded in the Sephardic communities of the United States, In addition, many of the texts provide new insights into the origins of the thematic traditions they represent. Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman have edited the ballads collected by Benardete, offering an English abstract and exhaustive bibliography for each ballad. In addition to placing each ballad within the context of its Sephardic variants, the bibliographies refer to the most important collections in the modern Castilian, Portuguese, Catalan, and Hispano-American traditions, to earlier (fifteenth- to seventeenth-century) evidence, and to any known analogs in other European traditions. The volume also includes a general bibliography, a thematic classification of the ballads, several indexes, and a glossary of exotic lexical elements. In an introduction, professors Armistead and Silverman present a documented survey of Judeo-Spanish ballad scholarship with particular attention to fieldwork in teh United States and elsewhere. Benardete himself attributed the decline of ballad singing among the Sephardim to a growing preference for phonographic recordings over traditional family singers. The need for further field-work increases as "Sephardic folkspeech and folklore retreat before the irresistible onslaught of the English language and modern American mass-media culture" (from the Introduction). This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520311633

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JUDEO-SPANISH BALLADS FROM NEW YORK

JUDEO-SPANISH BALLADS

FROM NEW YORK

Collected by

Mair José Benardete

Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by

SAMUEL G. ARMISTEAD and JOSEPH H. SILVERMAN

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON

The publication of this volume was supported in part by a grant from the

Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

Copyright © 1981 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Main entry under title:

Judeo-Spanish ballads from New York.

Includes ballads in Ladino with romanized text.

Bibliography: p. 119

Includes indexes.

1. Ballads, Ladino—New York (City) I. Benardete, Mair José, 1895- . II Armistead, Samuel G., 1927-

III. Silverman, Joseph H., 1924- PC4813.7.J8 861’.044’08 80-28714

ISBN O-52O-O4348-O

Printed in the United States of America

123456789

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

THE BALLADS

1 EL DESTIERRO DEL CID (á-o) + LAS QUEJAS DE JIMENA (á-e) (MP 5/A9 + MP 3/A3)

2 ALMERIQUE DE N ARBON A (z) + RONCES- VALLES (z) 4- LAS BODAS EN PARIS (z) (MP 20/B8 + MP 2O/B3 + MP 95/M14)

3 EL SUEÑO DE DOÑA ALDA (á-e) + MELISENDA INSOMNE (á-e) (MP 21/B6 + MP 28/B17)

4 GAIFEROS JUGADOR (á-e) (B 15)

5 ROSAFLORIDA Y MONTESINOS (t-a) (MP 26/B20)

6 JUAN LORENZO (á) (MP 12/C2)

7 LA MUERTE DEL DUQUE DE GANDÍA (í-a) (MP 14/C12)

8 LA EXPULSION DE LOS JUDÍOS DE PORTUGAL (/-o)

9 LA MUERTE DEL PRINCIPE DON JUAN (â-a) (MP 15/C14)

10 EL NACIMIENTO Y VOCACIÓN DE ABRAHAM (strophic)

11 EL SACRIFICIO DE ISAAC (á-o) (MP 31/E5)

12 EL ROBO DE DINA (o) (MP 32/E7)

13 TAMAR Y AMNÓN (a-a) (MP 37/E17)

14 BLANCAFLOR Y FILOMENA (é-a) (MP 100/Fl)

15 HERO Y LEANDRO (o) + LA MALCASADA DEL PASTOR (o) (MP 41/F2 + MP 72/L8)

16 EL ROBO DE ELENA (¿-o) (MP 43/F5)

17 TARQUINO Y LUCRECIA (a-a) (MP 45/F7)

18 VIRGILIOS (e) (MP 46/F8)

19 LAS HERMANAS REINA Y CAUTIVA (/-a) (MP 48/Hl)

20 DON BUESO Y SU HERMANA (strophic) (MP 49/H2)

21 LA VUELTA DEL MARIDO (/) (MP 58/11)

22 LA VUELTA DEL MARIDO (e) (MP 59/12)

23 EL CONDE NIÑO (á) (MP 55/J1)

24 DIEGO LEÓN (á-a) (MP 63/J5)

25 LA AMANTE ABANDONADA (polyas.) (K2)

26 EL PÁJARO VERDE (á-a) (MP 66/K5)

27 EL CONDE ALARCOS (i-a) (MP 64/Ll)

28 LA MALA SUEGRA (á-e) (MP 70/L4)

29 LA MALCASADA DEL PASTOR (ó) + JUAN LORENZO (á) (MP 72/L8 + MP 12/C2)

30 LA MUJER ENGAÑADA (í-ã) (MP 74/L13)

31 EL RAPTO (í-a) (MP 94/05)

32 EL FORZADOR (í-a) (MP 96/07)

33 SILVANA (¿-a) (MP 98/Pl)

34 DELGADINA (á-a) (MP 99/P2)

35 GERINELDO (i-o) (MP 101/Ql)

36 REPULSA Y COMPASIÓN (á) (MP 115/S5)

37 EL SUEÑO DE LA HIJA (polyas.) (MP 68, 129/S6)

38 EL POZO AIRÓN (o) (XI3)

39 LA SIERPE DEL RÍO (i-o) (XI5)

NOTES AND ENGLISH ABSTRACTS

THEMATIC CLASSIFICATION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Abbreviations of Journals, Serial Publications, and Organizations

B. Unedited Matenals

C.Published Sources

INDEXES

Index of Geographic Origins

Index of Ballad Titles

Index of First Verses

GLOSSARY

PREFACE

The Sephardic community of New York City is, without doubt, an excellent source of balladic material, given that there are representative numbers of families tirom all the Eastern Judeo-Spanish settlements, as well as from Morocco.1 As a matter of fact, there exist throughout the city beneficent societies for groups from such locations as Salonika, Monastir, Istanbul, Adrianopolis, Silivri, Gallipoli, Dardanelles, Ankara, Smyrna, Chios, Rhodes, and so on. These places would scarcely tempt any scholar, since the cost of a research trip to collect ballads in such remote sites would surely be prohibitive. But unstable political conditions in the Eastern Mediterranean area during the early years of this century gave impetus to the emigration of Jews from Turkey and the Balkan countries to the United States and to South America. So it is convenient that in New York City, with a Sephardic population of approximately twenty-five thousand, only time and patience are needed to interview native informants from all these distant communities.2 And yet this bright view must be qualified by several factors: a large number of young male Sephardic immigrants who do not sing ballads, the negative linguistic influence of the French-oriented Alliance Israélite Universelle, and the deleterious effects of the phonograph on folk traditions. As one elderly woman who sang for me explained, many ballads have disappeared because los fonógrafos nos siegaron los garones (phonographs have cut our throats, i.e., for singing). In truth, the phonograph has done away with the need to learn ballads by heart and, because of its easy availability and reasonable price, it has become the new source of family entertainment. Although the fondness for romances continues among the Sephardim of New York, the phonograph record—as performed by singers who scarcely know the lyrics and are accompanied by Turkish instruments, playing Turkish melodies—now prevails over the traditional family singer. So a heavy influx of young immigrants, a dearth of elderly singers, a growing interest in French and, of course, English, and the attractiveness of readily available phonograph records have all led inexorably to a marked decline in traditional ballad singing.

The Sephardic Jews of New York live in each of the city’s boroughs, particularly in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, as well as in its numerous outlying districts. It is not easy to locate them and most have a distinctively Hispano-Arabic sense of the sanctity of the home, zealously guarding their privacy. For these reasons, it has taken considerable effort to make contact with ballad singers.

In general, I collected my ballads from women, most of them of at least forty years of age and some with excellent repertoires. Mrs. Moché, from Salonika, whom I visited three times, gave the most texts—twenty-two altogether—even inviting me back to her home once again because she had remembered three more romansas, A young married lady, Mrs. Moreno, from Izmir, gave me seven texts; Mrs. Rica Levy, from Tangier, eight; Mrs. Fihma, from Tetuán, seven. Mrs. Rosina Sedacca and Mrs. Levy, from Dardanelles (Çanakkale) offered me their variants, as did Mrs. Aboulafla, from Gallipoli.

Now, after almost sixty years, it is a source of great satisfaction that this collection should become available to ballad scholars in published form.

Mair José Benardete

1 'The Preface adapts certain passages from the original introduction to Professor Benardete’s thesis. Thus it reflects, at various points, the circumstances of the early 1920s.

2 In a report prepared under the auspices of the Bureau of Jewish Social Research on behalf of the New York Federation, Louis M. Hacker stated that there were, according to conservative estimates, approximately forty thousand Sephardic Jews in New York City at the time of his investigation. Dr. Hacker indicated, on the basis of rather sketchy immigration figures, that between 1899 and 1925,25,591 men, women, and children of Sephardic origin entered the United States from Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. See The Communal Life of the Sephardic Jews in New York City, Journal of Jewish Communal Service, 3 (1926), 32-40: 32 and 34. For more details on this period, see Joseph M. Papo, The Sephardic Jewish Community of New York, Studies in Sephardic Culture: The David N. Barocas Memorial Volume, edited by Marc D. Angel (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1980), pp. 65—94. [Note of SGA and JHS.]

INTRODUCTION

It hardly seems necessary to insist on the crucial importance of the Judeo- Spanish ballad tradition to the study of both Pan-Hispanic and Pan-European balladry. The present-day Spanish-speaking Sephardim of Morocco, the Balkans, and the Near East are the descendants of Jews exiled from Spain at the end of the Middle Ages (in 1492). Their archaic, highly conservative ballad repertoires preserve many features of the Spanish ballad tradition as it existed at the time of their exile from the Iberian Peninsula. Numerous narrative types dating back to medieval times have thus survived among the Sephardic Jews, while they have, in many cases, disappeared from all other branches of the Hispanic ballad tradition. A thorough exploration of the Judeo-Spanish ballad corpus is, then, essential to the task of filling the rather substantial gaps that still exist in our knowledge of late medieval and sixteenth-century Spanish balladry. The Sephardic tradition is also, of course, crucially important to comparative studies of the various other modern branches of Pan-Hispanic balladry: the Spanish, Hispano-American, Portuguese, and Catalan traditions. At the same time, Judeo-Spanish narrative poetry, of all the various Hispanic sub-traditions, is also one of the most significant for comparative Pan-European ballad studies. Because of its conservatism, Sephardic balladry preserves a number of thematic correspondences to other European ballad traditions which are no longer in evidence in most other geographic branches of the Hispanic Romancero. Judeo-Spanish balladry can, then, frequently provide clues to thematic relationships on a Pan-European, as well as on a Pan-Hispanic, scale.1

Besides its important conservatism, as an archaic lateral tradition, another previously neglected aspect of the Judeo-Spanish ballad should also be taken into account. This is its eclectic character, its absorption of narrative themes and stylistic features borrowed from the popular poetry of the peoples among whom the Sephardim lived after their exile from Spain: namely from Greek, Turkish, and Arabic.2 Although the survival of medieval text-types constitutes one of the important facets of the Sephardic tradition, it should not impede the recognition of other characteristics of Judeo-Spanish balladry. In a fundamental review of recent scholarship, Diego Catalan has pointed out important innovative features coexisting with archaic elements, particularly in Eastern Mediterranean Sephardic balladry.3 With the publication of Paul Bénichou’s pathfinding Creación poética en el romancero tradicional (Madrid: Gredos, 1968)—based in many cases on Judeo-Spanish evidence—the Sephardic romancero emerges also as essential to the study of creativity in Hispanic traditional poetry.4

Of all the widely separated areas of the twentieth-century Sephardic diaspora, none has been more explored and none has yielded a greater harvest of Judeo-Spanish folk-poetry than the United States. Israel,5 Spain,6 France,7 England,8 9 10 Holland,11 Belgium,12 Canada,¹³ Cuba,14 Mexico,15 Venezuela,16 Uruguay,17 Argentina, Paraguay,¹⁸ Rhodesia, and South Africa,¹⁹ all have Sephardic immigrant communities of relatively recent origin, but none has been explored in such depth or by so many ballad fieldworkers as those of the United States (and many have not been explored at all). Only the multisecular Sephardic homelands of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa have produced larger collections of ballads than those brought together in the United States.²⁰

el Archivo Menendez Pidal, 3 vols. (Madrid: C.S.M.P., 1978), III, 147 (subsequently cited as CMP).

¹³ No interviews with Sephardic informants in the large Mexico City community have so far yielded ballads. Cf. Sephiha, L'Agonie, p. 95.

¹⁴ Oro A. Librowicz has collected 102 Moroccan ballad texts in Caracas. More work could undoubtedly be done there.

¹⁵ Mónica E. Hollander has thoroughly explored the Montevideo community. See her Reliquias del romancero judeo-español de Oriente (Ph.D. diss.. University of Pennsylvania, 1978). The texts included in Jacobo Politi and Daniel Aljanati, Selección de romanzas y poesía litúrgica sefarditas (Montevideo: Comunidad Israelita Sefardí, 1974), are all secondhand, being reproductions from publications of Isaac Levy. Judeo-Spanish ballad