"Amidst America, There’s a Solid Brick Inn", song about emigration

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The song covers several topics at the same time. It focuses on the difficulties of migrant work, adaptation in a new country, and separation from the family. New migrants sit and drink in the inn (korchma). The use of this term demonstrates the domestication of a new space through familiar concepts and rituals. At the same time, migrants have an important connection with the “old land”, with Europe, where their wives stayed behind. Contacts with home mainly happen when they transfer money and the man is worried lest the woman gets a lover.
From this song, we can also understand that it is more profitable to work in the mines, underground. One such popular place of work for Ukrainian migrants were coal mines in Pennsylvania.

Title:: “Amidst America, There’s a Solid Brick Inn”, song about emigration
Printed in:: Ukrainian Folk Songs of East Slovackia /Recorded and compiled by A.Duleba. Slovack Pedagogical Publishing, 1977. V. З. P. 89. No. 81. 127.
Original language:: Ukrainian

Amidst America, There’s a Solid Brick Inn

Amidst America, there is a solid brick inn, (twice)
Hey, until early hours the boys are drinking. (twice)

They would drink and drink, and talk: (twice)
— Hey, let’s go back to our old land, folks! (twice)

‘Coz over there they think of us things, (twice)
Hey, that in America, they’re stinking rich. (twice)

No, they have no pots of money, tugging hard and long, (twice)
Hey, deep under the ground, they work their fingers to the bone. (twice)

Belowground, underground, under the grey rocks, (twice)
Hey, they crawl under the grey rock, like the little worms. (twice)

— If I don’t work hard enough below, (twice)
Hey, my woman is barefoot and low. (twice)

When I go and dig hard working there, (twice)
Hey, nice boots my woman can wear. (twice)

She will wear nice boots, and walk in them, (twice)
Hey, and she could attract a lover for her. (twice)

— Go ahead, my wife, get a love-mate, (twice)
Hey, ‘coz I won’t make it there, to visit, nay. (twice)

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Image for The Great Migration of the 19th and early 20th Centuries: The Personal Experience of Eastern European Migrants in Folklore and Memories

The Great Migration of the 19th and early 20th Centuries: The Personal Experience of Eastern European Migrants in Folklore and Memories

The end of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th century is known as the period of mass migration from Europe to other continents, when more than 55 million people changed their place of residence. In particular, this process captured the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, where a difficult economic situation, job shortages, and persecutions stirred various groups of the population to leave. Such groups included both Ukrainian and Polish peasants, and Jews from urban centers who were small-scale craftsmen or workers. Most often, they moved to the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, where labor was needed at factories or farms.

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Research, comment: Vladyslava Moskalets
Translation into English: Svitlana Bregman

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“Amidst America, There’s a Solid Brick Inn”, song about emigration

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Audio (3)

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