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Diabetics R Us


Sounds like one of the many variants to Schuitje Varen, Theetje Drinken.

Roeien, roeien naar grootje toe,
Grootje heeft een bonte koe,
Met horens,
Kerken hebben torens;
Huisjes hebben dakken;
Koekjes zullen we bakken,
Als de bakker brengt de gist
En het koetje melk p.st,
En het kippetje eitjes leit,
Koeken zal bakken de keukenmeid.

or

Schuitje varen theetje drinken,
varen wij naar oma toe,
oma heeft een bonte koe,
oma die gaat melken,
(naam kind) die mag helpen.
van je rommelde bom
van je rommeldebom
(naam kind) gooide de emmer om.
Ohhh, schoonmaken.


Or a Slaap, Kindje, Slaap variant:
Slaap kindje, slaap
Daar buiten loopt een schaap
Een schaap met witte voetjes
Dat drinkt zijn melk zo zoetjes
Schaapje en een bonte koe
Kindje doe je oogjes toe

Bonte koe, what I think buntehuh probably refers to, means "spotted cow"... And us dutch rather love our cows, they tend to show up in a lot of songs. There also was a book called the Ship's boys of the Bontekoe, published in english as Java Ho! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Ho!). Any of that sound familliar?
 
The first one sounds very familiar! Thank you very much, @JoKalsbeek ! I am sitting here smiling -- you just took me back more than 60 years. I wish there were a way I could sing the tune here. Oh, well, someday we will be able to enter tunes -- I'm not gonna go sing on YouTube!

I think Mama sang the first half in Dutch and the second half in English, because the first half sounded like it might be the first three lines of yours (is that "the spotted cow with horns"?). After "met horens" it sounded English to me: Phonetically:

Father wasn't in the house
Mother wasn't in the house
Peep! said the little mouse in the summer house. (but it sounded more like "hoose").

Does that make any sense?

Talking of cows, when I was a freshman at Auburn University I used to ride the dairy manager's horse, and to get to the roads and trails we rode on, we rode out through the pasture of the dairy herd. About 300 Holsteins and 3 Jerseys. It was so cool.
 
Oh yes, it makes sense... That's how one version of the song goes. : vader was niet thuis, moeder was niet thuis, piep zei de muis in het voorhuis. Except that voorhuis was more like the "nice" livingroom, part of the house facing the streetside. Where you went if the pastor visited, with some sherry especially bought for him, haha. (For other visitors, the kitchen and tea was good enough. ).
I'm from a city in a rural area, Tilburg.... So it was easy to ride my bike out of the city limits, and there'd basically be cows everywhere. Not like riding a horse, I guess, but can't get much more Dutch than riding a bicycle along cow pastures. Well, if I'd worn clogs and eaten cheese along the way, maybe. These days I live an hour north from there. There's 3 Scottish Highlanders (red and black) in a little pasture for show, but other than that, it's mostly sheep around here. And a few towns over they have masses of chickens (Barnevelders, from, naturally, Barneveld). Not as cow-ey as in the south.
 
Morning all

Got to be in work at 8am as we have a phone engineer coming and of course the appointment time is 8am - 1pm.

Have a good day.

H
 
Not quite sure of this but.

Roeien, roeien naar grootje toe,
Grootje heeft een bonte koe,
Met horens,
Kerken hebben torens;
Huisjes hebben dakken;
Koekjes zullen we bakken,
Als de bakker brengt de gist
En het koetje melk p.st,
En het kippetje eitjes leit,
Koeken zal bakken de keukenmeid.


Rowing, rowing to big,
Grootje has a colorful cow,
With horns,
Churches have towers;
Cottages have roofs;
We will bake cookies,
If the baker brings the yeast
And the cow milk p.st,
And the chicken leeks eggs,
Koeken will bake the kitchen maid.

Not a good idea to bake the kitchen maid I think.
 
It's a grammar thing... Cookies, the kitchen maid shall bake is a more correct translation. The importance of comma's eh.
 
That's funny, I know many children's songs but of all the songs you mentioned I never heard the versions with the bonte koe

SaskiaKC said:
Father wasn't in the house
Mother wasn't in the house
Peep! said the little mouse in the summer house. (but it sounded more like "hoose").

Does that make any sense?
Click to expand...
That one is a different song altogether but of course you might sing childern's songs in the same order every time, making it one song.
Here's a horrible version of it, but it has nice pictures showing the meaning of the words:

 

I love vision of you riding a bicycle in clogs and eating cheese. More coodinated than I am! Tilburg sounds like Auburn when I was there -- a 5-minute bicycle ride from the middle of town took you out into the country. The dairy herd was right on campus when I was there, just across from the football practice field. Later they moved it about 45 minutes away, why, I have no idea. Auburn offered a major in Animal and Dairy Sciences so you'd think they'd have wanted the dairy herd right on campus.

Is "voorhuis" like "front of the house"? I studied German in high school and college as it was as close as I could get to Dutch (and I was better at it than I was at psychology). But that's 40-odd years ago and I'm out of practice. I wish Mama's mother had spoken Dutch to her children but she mainly spoke it to her mother when she didn't want the kids to know what they were talking about.

My great-grandparents immigrated to Michigan from Zuid Holland, as far as I know, and one of my great-grandfathers worked in Haastrecht. This is so cool -- getting out my family history notebook and looking through it again!

@JohnEGreen and @Antje77 thanks for the songs.
 
SaskiaKC said:
Is "voorhuis" like "front of the house"?
Click to expand...
Yes, it is. You kept all the beautiful furniture in one room, the 'pronkkamer' for important visitors. It was the room at the front of the house, where people could see it. Not unlike the plates you only use on sunday or holiday dinners. And not unlike many people who shove all their junk in a bedroom when expecting visitors

edit: In the cities apartments in multiple storied houses in poor area's often had a 'voorhuis' and an 'achterhuis' (like where the Anne Frank family lived), so two families could live in the same apartment.
 
@Antje77 that sounds like American living rooms, which really aren't for "living" in a house as much as they are for company. Like the dining room. The "family room" is for living in, and casual company, but I think that used to depend a lot on age groups too. Even my parents' good, close, friends were always entertained in the "company" living room and fed in the dining room, not in the family room ("den") or kitchen/breakfast room. And they got the "good china" and the actually silver silverware. As our family did for holidays and sometimes Sundays.

These days houses seem to be designed less "formally," with just a living room. And apartments usually just have one living room that's a sitting room.
 
Reminder to self and possible useful advice: After injecting, don't keep reading your book while unscrewing the used needle and re-capping the pen, even if you badly need to know what happens in the next few sentences.
The needle might not have been properly un-screwd and stabbing your hand in a particular bony part screws more with your concentration than looking away from your book for half a second.
Screw it. I'm back to my book and ignore the feeling of rythmically screwing pixies in the joint of my forefinger.
 
You must tell us what book you were reading that was so spellbinding!
 
Reactions: heh
"Confessions Are Us ..."

I have just done a terrible thing.

My excuse:
The cafeteria in my building will be closed as of January 31st. The cook who treats us about once a month to her secret-recipe bread pudding with raisins and custard sauce won't be here anymore. I used to go down about once or twice a year to buy a serving of bread pudding. Then, last spring, after being diagnoised T2, I gave it up.

Today, I happened to have a pint of milk in the fridge, so, knowing about the cafeteria closure, I went down there and bought myself a serving of bread pudding with custard to go.

I just ate nearly 3/4 of it. Hot, with ice-cold milk.

Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. But oh so good. Good. Good. GOOD. GOOD.

I am now going to get up off the sofa and go throw the rest of the bread pudding away. And pour out the rest of the milk.
 
Sounds like a perfect excuse, and anyway, you'll be safe from breadpudding in 2 weeks. So be happy you've had good-bye bread pudding and eat sensible again tomorrow!
 
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