Turns out three of the most commonly known Yiddish songs (Donna Donna, Bei Mir Bistu Shein, and Крутится Вертится Шар Голубой) exist in the versions written by the same guy, Sholom Secunda.
Interestingly, in Polish Vu Iz Dos Gesele exists as a chorus to the folk song Szła Dzieweczka Do Laseczka (above). That song, without the chorus, was a favorite of my grandmother’s because it was a favorite of her father. It is an outgrowth of an 18th century Silesian song “Szla Dzieweczka do Gajeczka”
It is, supposedly, a wedding song, which makes the last verse, in which the guy promises to beat the girl up if he ever meets her in the forest, even weirder. Grandmother never sung that one.
The chorus, in the Крутится Вертится Шар Голубой version heard in Maxim’s Youth (below) was a favorite of my grandfather’s. Both of my grandparents were born in the early 30s, while the song became popular in the USA in the late 20s.
In English Secunda’s 1926 version was re-worded after the Holocaust and sung by sisters Barry and many others.
In Russian there are a number of versions of this song, from train-oriented (see Wikipedia link above) to soppy love ones (one of which is claimed to be the original Russian text, referring, moreover, to a scarf. I am skeptical.) .
There are two versions about fighting Nazis, the classic one also from the Maxim trilogy and one by Isakovsky, author of almost every Soviet song I know by heart (Incomplete list: «Катюша», «Враги сожгли родную хату», «В лесу прифронтовом», «Летят перелётные птицы», «Под звёздами балканскими», «Ой, цветёт калина»).
All that would be amazing enough, but this song, with the Polish version of the music minus the chorus and a very gruesome text (“let’s go to the forest my daughter, we’ll cut you, run! run! ha-ha-ha!) is also popular in Japan!
In India the same Silesian folk song, again minus the chorus, translated into a beautiful love song with no beatings or gloating included.
Globalism, I love it.
I would be remiss if I did not note this article containing the hypothesis that the original version had a blue scarf, not a globe (although I think a blue scarf twirling above someone’s head and falling is just as unlikely as a blue globe) and the even more unlikely hypothesis that the author of the ugliest version of lyrics was Grand Duke Konstantin.