Advent Carol: "Czekam na Ciebie"

Czekam na Ciebie,  "I wait for You," expresses longing and yearning for the arrival of the Savior.  The Liturgical Season of Advent is prime time for these feelings.

How does it sound? In minor mode, it sounds yearning. Like this, sung by a church organist with an affecting baritone. And like this, performed in the style of a quiet folk tune.

From Nuty Religijne we can obtain the score with Polish lyrics:

Source for the Polish lyric is teksty.org:

Czekam na Ciebie, Jezu mój mały,
ciche błaganie, ku niebu śle.
Twojego przyjścia, czeka świat cały.
Sercem gorącym przyzywa Cię.

          I wait for You, my little Jesus,
          Silent supplication to the sky send.
          For your advent, the whole world is waiting.
          Fervent hearts call You.

Spójrz, tęskniony na tej ziemi,
przyjdź, o Jezu, pociesz nas!
Szczerze kochać Cię będziemy.
Przyjdź, o Jezu, bo już czas.

          Look upon this Earth with its longing,
          Come, O Jesus, comfort us!
          Truly we will love You.
          Come, O Jesus, because it is already time.



Usłysz Maryjo głos Twoich dzieci,
Tyś naszą Matką na każdy dzień.
O daj nam Słońce, które rozświeci,
grzechu i błędu straszliwy cień.

          Hear, Mary, the voice of your children.
          Thou art our Mother, every day.
          Give to us the Sun, that its light
          Will enshadow sin and terrible error.

Spójrz teskniony na tej ziemi,
daj nam Zbawcę, Dziecię Twe.
My dla Niego żyć pragniemy,
Jemu damy serca swe.

          Look upon this Earth with its longing,

          Give to us the Savior, your Son.

          We for Him to be living crave,

          To Him we will give our hearts.

This is a revision of the 2013 post Czekam na Ciebie.

This is edited once more for 2020.

Obyś miał Błogosławiony Adwent!

Obyś miał Błogosławiony Adwent!

We would say "May you have a blessed Advent!"  This is "So that he had (a) blessed Advent."

Obyś = so that (with a hopeful connotation);
miał = 3d person singular, past tense of mieć, to have.


So Dad would tell this joke about a guy who walks into a bar with a cat.  In Polish he says "This cat can talk."

"Baloney," say the others.

"Yes, this cat talks.  Buy me a drink and I'll prove it,"  he says.

After suitable joshing and offering of toasts, the others demand the proof.  The cat is just sitting there on the bar.

In due time, silence is achieved; the guy puts down his glass, turns to the cat, and addresses this question to him in a clear, serious, and respectful manner:  Miał Piłsudski wąsy?   (General Piłsudski he had whiskers?)

And the cat promptly and enthusiastically replies, Miał !!

Isn't that just the greatest joke ever?

All right, all right, Obyś miał Błogosławiony Adwent!  On this First Sunday of Advent, we begin preparation for the upcoming Nativity through examination of conscience, reflection on the past twelvemonth, forgiveness, and tidying up of affairs spiritual and temporal. This is also a fitting time to recall the Annunciation, celebrated as a feastday every April but recalled now.  The first hymn in the hymnal is therefore Archanioł Boży Gabryjel.  That 12/19/17 post includes various performances in Youtube video, as well as my amateur translation of five verses.

Here is the Spiewnik kościelny, ("Songs of church," hence sacred songs, hymns) in format for a church organist. This volume belonged to our JPZ.

12" x 8"

Wielbij duszo moja Pana I would give as "My soul adore my Lord."

First hymn of the Liturgical Year

What I find satisfactory is listening to a performance while following verses and translations in the 2017 post Archanioł Boży Gabryjel. 

Archangel Gabriel, Luca Signorelli, c1450-1523

 

Obyś wszyscy mieliście Błogosławiony Adwent!  (May you all have a blessed Advent!)

Odd Little Family Mystery from 95 Years Ago

Our EJZ has a different middle name on his birth and baptismal certificates than he has on his marriage license and on Marty's baptismal certificate.

Here is the EJZ birth certificate: 10/07/1923 is given as birth date;  date of issuance is four days later; there is no raised seal, as occur on certificates from later eras; the name is given as Eugene Daniel Zdrojewski.

Baptism was 10/21/1923, and again here we see Eugene Daniel.

Note that Eugene's sponsors that day at St. Luke's were Joseph Mostkowski and Wiktorya Zdrojewski.

Then something happened.  I heard, or partially heard, a story, or part of a story, about a priest from St. Luke's visiting the house and persuading Dad's parents that Daniel was not the best middle name for this child, and that John would be better.  Can anyone confirm this or provide details?

So all through his school years he knew himself and recorded himself as Eugene John.  His 1948 marriage certificate states his name as Eugene John.  His son Martin's birth certificate gives Martin's father's name as Eugene John in 1951.

Bzzzzzt!  The bureaucracy must have caught on to the scam at that point, 28 years later.  Why do I guess this?  I guess this because the issuance date of the Certificate of Baptism for Eugene Daniel Zdrojewski is 07/24/1952.  Why did Dad get himself a Certificate of Baptism in 1952?  

Well, maybe since they moved from their Buffalo apartment to their Bowmansville rented house, he joined a new parish, Sacred Heart in Bowmansville, and had to hand his new clergy proof of baptism in order to join.  Or maybe he had to gather up every scrap of official paper he had and show it to the civil authorities in order to prove that he was in fact the father of Martin Zdrojewski, and that Marty had not been kidnapped from somebody else.  That would make a more exciting story.  

But since we will never know one way or the other, we may just as well return to speculation as to why the kerfuffle originated in the first place.  Did some meddlesome  priest, as Shakespeare says, call on the family one day in late 1923?  Why did he care what the child's middle name was?  Did he have any understanding of the annoyance it could cause the lad later on, or the confusion as he looked at his birth certificate and saw what he considers somebody else's name?  Did this priest of legend and mystery understand all that, but not care?  Did Grandma Julia offer him Christmas cookies and coffee?

When we open an old box or folder, to behold and handle old family items, it is as if little wraiths curl up as well out of the box or folder, and coil silently and invisibly about the room.  Then we change as if we had breathed those wraiths into ourselves; they possess us, usually in a mild form of possession, and work on us, usually slowly.  In this case, the folders lay open atop the unpracticed piano for six days while thoughts, like little gears, turned slowly in the back of my mind. I did not know what to think until after deciding to choose three documents to scan.  So I scanned three and started writing.  I am far from sure that this writing is evidence of thinking, but I do proclaim it to be robust and unashamed piffle.  

My piffle is potent stuff; now the atmosphere in the room has become less congenial to the wraiths.  I will pack up the file folders, and just before I close the lid on their box, the last of them will slide inside to be shut away again.

Melania

Dad, our EJZ, and his brother Casimir had a younger sister, Melania.

Melania was ten years younger than Eugene, having been born 12/14/1933.  She died, at home, of whooping cough, when a young girl.  Dad was unsure of the year of her death, recalling to me only that she died when he was away at Orchard Lake high school. 

When Dad was 16, Melania was six years old.

There appear to be no photographs or effects of any kind of this little girl.  It is as if any reminder would be so painful that no reminders were permitted.

What did she look like?  Here is her mother, Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewski, shortly after her marriage:

And here is the same lady some years later, probably after having had three children.  Note that her husband, our JPZ, arranged a similar pose:

Pertussis vaccine was developed in 1926; by 1933 it had been around for 6 or 7 years.  I wonder if Melania had been vaccinated.  In any event, the vaccine has never been perfect; mutations of the bacterium do occur; there was no antibiotic to treat a case of pertussis in the 1930s.

Had she lived, she would have been Aunt Melania to the children of Eugene and of Casimir.  Her children would have been cousins to our generation; their children second cousins to our children.

Dad only spoke of his little sister a couple of times.  He used hushed tones and pretty quickly put an end to the conversation.  Thinking back on that, I realize that twice in his life, his womenfolk died while he was away.  First his little sister died of a sudden illness, when he was a teenager.  Then when he was in Army boot camp in Fort Benning, his mother died of a heart attack.  Medical advances having made such deaths less common, it is easy for us of a later generation to fail to realize what it was sometimes like for our elders, even in peacetime at home.

Speaking of peacetime at home, here is the back of Aunt Melania's birth certificate:

The line at the bottom, centered, italicized, and bolded, instructs Carefully preserve this certificate by having it framed.  My instinctive reaction is FDR has been elected 5 weeks and already we are being ordered around!  I am satisfied to report that our family disobeyed.  They stuck it in a file with other such documents, which I am now going through.

This means that there will be edits to the other pages of this blog, beginning with the Z side and moving along to the M side.  I would be so appreciative of additions and corrections to the data up on those family pages.

Herbert Meyer on The Decision to Win the Cold War

Steven Hayward of Powerline has put up as a podcast a couple of interviews with Herbert Meyer, right-hand man to William Casey in Reagan's CIA. They date from 2014, and concern matters in 1983 particularly, as well as Poland particularly.  But the principles and the lessons concern 9/11 in identical fashion, and apply to the future as well.

The theme is that there is a right way and a wrong way to run a spy outfit. The right way is to attract and empower talent: individuals of talent in positions of responsibility and authority. The wrong way is to disgust talented people so as to drive them away, and empower career bureaucratic minds in their place.  What can be done with a bureaucratized agency other than shut it down and start over? My favorite quote:  "Bill Casey built an OSS within the CIA."

The podcast is here; the latter 80% of it is a more leisurely discussion that took place at Meyer's home on some island in Puget Sound.  It is worth the going through the more frenetic and clipped radio interview that constitutes the first 20% of the podcast.

Meyer wrote a memo urging top-level CIA to recast their thinking about what to do - win versus "lose elegantly." To say that it is thoughtful and thorough sounds pitiful, but then there is no way to do it justice. It just has to be read.  The memo has been declassified and can be read in .pdf form for that authentic early-1980s look.

Meyer went on to reboot intelligence gathering from all those capable agents in the field who had not been told the right things to look for, if data were to be gathered that could form a useful information pattern in the service of testing the hypothesis that the Soviet economy was on the rocks, and not rolling along as the then-current wisdom read. In the podcast he describes in vivid terms what this reboot meant.  Doing this was simple enough.  But it had not been done until somebody came along and realized what was wrong with procedures and how to put them right. Thanks, Mr. Meyer, Mr. Casey.

So, Russian factory workers were so desperate that they hijacked a meat train, held the conductors, offloaded all the government meat onto stolen trucks they had ready and waiting, and got out of there fast?  Who knew?  Well, people had known, but had not known that the bosses back home wanted to hear the story! When that was set right, the right data could flow in and be turned into information bearing on the hypothesis and destined for the desk of a Chief Executive who very much cared to think about it.

This is a story best heard from a man at the center of it. We are lucky to have it brought for us to hear; thanks, Mr. Hayward.

A Familiar Face

Dave Brubeck's music has given me great enjoyment - so much so that quite a while ago I pulled his photo out of his CD album and put it up on the refrigerator.

It seemed like such a natural thing to do. The thought of taking down that smiling face is disturbing. That's not an option!

Marian McPartland interviewed many jazz pianists for her radio show. Her Piano Jazz episode with Dave Brubeck is a favorite. They talk about and play music; he discusses how his classical piano training made his jazz possible and meaningful; he recalled his trip to Kraków, to the Jagiellonian University museum, where he "saw Chopin's piano."  A fan of Chopin!  No wonder I'm a fan of Brubeck!

Well, well, the joke is on me.  The other day, while sifting through the Photo Trove, I found this print in my hands.

It's the early 1960s, and a cool day with green leaves on the big cherry tree in the front yard at the Marilla house.  Perhaps the occasion is one of Mom and Dad's Memorial Day picnics. Any road, the party seems to be going well.

Memory is a funny thing; apparently so are preferences and inclinations. Brubeck's face looked really lovable to me.  I did not consciously think of Dad when admiring it. But subconsciously - that's another story, wouldn't you say?

Well now I am spooked. It is time to pull out one of those bubble beer mugs of Marilla origin and pour some beer into it as in days of yore. It is time to "restore the tissues," as Bertie Wooster says, and consider memories, and memory.

Blue Rondo alla Turca is among the favorites.

                                     

Lubię piwo.  Na zdrowie!

In a Larger Sense, These Battles Never End

Not too much of researches this day! Other work has intervened. 

Our special ops forces were in the news; I learned about HALO: High-Altitude, Low-Opening jumps.  Some of them jump out of the airplane at 30,000 feet.

Thinking about that I looked up at the far wall; there was a little photo of a studious young man who learned to jump in 1943.  His birthday is coming up on October 7th.

Thinking today about all the men who jump when they have to. Some jump out of airplanes, some jump in hearing rooms or other places, to defend the country and things like due process and the US Constitution.

Here is our EJZ at U Chicago. He's  studying in preparation for deployment to Japanese-occupied China.  At the same time he is thinking about Europe, specifically Poland, the land of his ancestors; see the map on the wall behind him?  And he is thinking of his buddies; see the photos?  

Snopki

This time of year Dad would glean a few armsful of dry cornstalks that had missed the chopper at corn harvest  in the neighboring fields. He would bind them together in sheaves and prop them up at doorposts with bright pumpkins and gourds arrayed around them. Indian corn, in purples, reds, yellows, whites, and blacks, he would hang near them.

So for our snopki we had stalks of American cow-corn grown by American farmers - owner-operators of their farms, and of the farm machinery that lightens the work and vastly increases productivity.

In centuries past, across Europe, the snopki were of wheat or barley straw. At harvest, the peasants walked along in a line, each with a scythe, cutting the wheat or barley. Others would follow behind, binding the stalks into sheaves and standing three or four sheaves upright against each other so that if rain fell it would mostly drain off.

Still, the sheaves had to be dry when brought into the barn. So on a bright, sunny day following a few good drying days, there would take place "bringing in the sheaves."

This is "Chłopiec niosący snop" - "Boy Carrying a Sheaf." 

Snop is a sheaf; snopy, sheaves.

Snopek is a little sheaf; snopki, little sheaves.

 Aleksander Gierymski painted this in 1893 in a Polish village called Bronowic. Looks like a good dry day, doesn't it? By the shadow I would say it is late morning, which it would have to be for the dew to have burned off. The field is otherwise empty as much as we can see, so maybe they have been doing this for a few days, planning their harvest festival all the while.

Leszek Lubicki maintains a fascinating blog, Obrazowo rzecz ujmując, ("Figuratively Speaking") for his discussions of Polish paintings of late C19 and early C20.  Lubicki includes in what I call his Snopek post, his essay on this one painting of Gierymski, a photo of the painting as displayed at the National Museum in Wrocław.

Notice the bronze of the man with a scythe.

Marilla Tape - Matynka 40th Wedding Anniversary Party

The young man saw a guy get fresh with a pretty girl and distress her. So he clocked him.

This being early 1920s Buffalo, the young man spent the night in jail. But it was worth it because he soon married the pretty girl.

Adam Matynka and Clara Haremska Matynka celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary at a family gathering recorded in part by Martin Zdrojewski, the Impresario grandson with the cutting edge, state-of-the-art, reel-to-reel audiotape recorder.  The party ran past midnight.

0:00 - 3:00.  Adam Matynka leads the crew in multiple verses of a Polish song well known to everybody except the grandchildren.  Now I have no idea what it is and am having a hard time figuring out any clues.

Marty announces midnight at the 40th Wedding Anniversary Party.

3:30 - 4:15.  Sonny Boy.  Mom, our CAMZ, told us that when she was little, her father would sit her on his knee and sing to her: Climb upon my knee, Sonny Girl.  (Joke!)  Well, I was very impressed with this sweet story, and remained so until discovering decades later that the maudlin 1928 song, as well as the maudlin Al Jolson movie, ends with little Sonny dying.  The angels took you because they were lonely . . . for crying out loud!

4:15 - 5:04.  I Will Always Call You Sweetheart.  Better: people get old and grey but you don't suddenly find out that they are dead.

5:17.  Roll Out the Barrel.  Good idea.

5:47.  Sto lat!

6:17.  The old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be . . . okay.

7:20.  Uncle Walter reminds everyone of the lyric in this different version of Sto lat.  This is the first clear recording of his voice, as far as I can tell.  He never did say much. But when he did, what he said was often just what was necessary.

8:50.  Gertrude asks her father to speak to [his] children. Somebody says Cicho!!  "Quiet!!"  Adam proceeds with T'anks for coming here and showing us all a good time . . .    The recording concludes with individual spoken testimonials, which are pretty nice and fairly formal, considering the hour and circumstances.

Marty and I have happy memories of times like this. But our elders did not teach us the songs, so we do not know them. Our elders did not sing with us, so we don't sing the songs ourselves or teach our own children.

Often we were told that Children should be seen and not heard. Our elders achieved success. We cannot be heard.

Clara and Adam Matynka at 554 Walden Avenue, a Buffalo long gone

The climactic scene from Jeeves and Wooster, Season 1, Episode 2:

May Street Tapes - Marty's Production Notes

When Marty sent me the several May Street audiotapes which we've been considering in the previous several posts, he included some notes on his retrieval and archiving processes.

The geekily inclined will find them of intrinsic interest; anybody can appreciate the care and judgment that the effort required.

Thanks again, Marty.

Here are Marty's notes:

_____________________________________________________

"My long time lab partner from work has a reel-to-reel deck.

I went to his place last Saturday with 3 of the 6 tapes.

After a confusing and slow start, we recovered all the personal recordings.

There was roughly 30 minutes of personal audio taken from various sections of one reel.

All of this was stored in a .wav file.

I split this file into 3 parts,also .wav files.

I then converted these to mp3 files.

These are attached.

Details:

Starting out, everything played backward.

We tried various things including an inverted rewind.

Still backwards.

Finally, mid-reel, we took the reels off the machine and switched them so the tape would be going in the opposite direction.

It played correctly.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the tape was recorded in 2-track stereo (can be played in one direction only) and left in the box tail-out; and we were playing it on a 4-track stereo machine assuming there was a head and tail at each end (can be played in both directions).

The condition of the tape was remarkably good.

The tape in the box with index notes indicating a lot of personal content was filled completely with music.

The tape in the box with index notes indicating mostly music and maybe some personal content was where all the personal content was found.

The tape in the box with index notes indicating a 4-track stereo recording of music was completely blank.

The other 3 tapes have no index notes with them; except for one which says "brittle film", and sure enough, that tape looks poor.

When we first heard the grandfather clock, it sounded great.

Listening to it several times after that with cheap headphones, I wonder if we got it at the correct speed."

_____________________________________________________

I'd say the grandfather clock sounds just right, in pitch and tempo.

I'd also say some tech talent was evidently transmitted from grandfather to grandson.

May Street Tapes - Florida Trip and a Party at Home

For openers, JPZ/Daddy/Dziadzi reads a letter he has received from Eleanor, who has taken the train for a Florida vacation. At 0:33 Eleanor in her letter says "Emily and I."  Is Emily her sister?

At 0:57 she expresses in her writing the fond hope that JPZ will be "visiting Johnny" (presumably at the home of his Kotwas grandparents) so that Johnny will not be "missing her too much."  Hilariously, JPZ breaks in in his own deep voice with a hearty "Me too!!"

At 1:03 Eleanor's letter mentions "Gwennie and Dickie." These must be Kotwas relations also. Can somebody figure this out and let us all know the specifics? It would be terrific to have names and photos to associate with these voices.

At 1:24 she tells of their getting dolled up and going to a Martha Raye show. Raye was a very popular  singer and actress who did a lot of USO tours as well, during WWII and subsequently.

Correspondence now dealt with, we come to a mystery poem, or prayer in verse, at 1:50. Can anyone offer a hint as to what this is? Król  is "crown."  So it sounds like a reference to the King of Kings, in niebieski, heaven.

And there cannot be an event like this without a poem about an orphan. At 3:30 we hear of the sierota.  I'd love to find a transcription of this poem; let me know if you find one, please? 

(On a wall of the Marilla house hung a print depicting an orphan girl, weeping as she leaves the cemetery where she evidently has been visiting the grave of her parents. I cannot find that painting on an image search, which is a sad thing. There were several framed prints in the house which I suspect were purchased by Dad, our EJZ, while he was in Chicago in 1943-1944. One of them has a label on the back with the name of a Chicago art dealer. Sierota may have been one of those.)

Back to the sound file: They have Johnny back to praying again from 4:18 to 6:00. Spiritually, the partiers are covered.

What is the beautiful song at 6:25?  I'd love to learn that song! Can anybody come up with a title or first line or a keyword?

From 6:44 the celebration is for Grandma Victoria Zdrojewska.  "Let's all sing for Busia . . . na imieniny."  This day was her name-day. She was named after a saint, and this is the feast-day of that saint. Her family sings to her Vivat!  Sto lat!

Sto lat, sto lat,

Niech żyje, żyje nam.

Sto lat, sto lat,

Niech żyje, żyje nam,

Jeszcze raz, jeszcze raz,

Niech żyje, żyje nam,

Niech żyje nam!

           One hundred years, one hundred years,

           That she lives, she lives among us.

           One hundred years, one hundred years,

           That she lives, she lives among us.

           Once again! Once again:

           That she lives, she lives among us,

           That she lives among us!

Following the whistling performance, at 8:34 JPZ has a little visit with his grandson Mark. This helps date the file to about 1955; does that sound reasonable? JPZ jingles some Christmas bells and asks Mark Co to jest? - What are these/is this?  I wonder if he was hoping for an answer in English, "bells" or in Polish, dzwony.

Following the jingle bells is an interlude of conversation in which a lady says  the word południe repeatedly.  Południe means "noon," "midday." It also means "south." Think about how ancient a word must be, if the directional term, "south," is the same as the primitive astronomical observation a person can make just by standing outside at midday.

Stand there at midday, when the sun is as high as it ever is going to get that day. Raise one arm and point it directly overhead. Raise the other arm and point to the sun. If you walk in the plane determined by those two line segments your two arms, and walk on a line in the direction from the overhead-pointing arm and toward the sun-pointing arm, you are walking south. 

You need noon to determine south. That's the way it is in the Northern Hemisphere of our planet. We use words invented by very distant forbears living the lives of pastoralists, farmers, and hunters.

By 9:10 in this file the partiers are starting discussions on singing Christmas carols. Johnny livens things up by bringing out his new toy six-gun. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Hey! Finger off the trigger and out of the trigger-guard!

What a ride this file has been!  Thanks, Marty, for your rescue operations.

Related, previous posts: 

Three Bears;

Good Night Prayers - Our Father;

Good Night Prayers - Hail Mary;

Good Night Prayers - Conclusion and Mystery Poem.

Grandpa Ludwig, Grandma Victoria, and Uncle Stanley

Casimir, John, Eugene

May Street Tapes - Good Night Prayers. Conclusion, with Mystery Poem.

Angels are the subject of the mystery poem, the prayer in verse, that runs from 2:43 to 3:43.

JPZ and JFZ Johnny read it together - is sounds like four lines - after which we hear JPZ's voice saying teraz razem. That is "now once".  Razem is a time, an occasion, an instance of something occurring.

So JPZ says teraz razem, whereon the two of them repeat the verse.

Then, in what is the most poignant part for me, we hear our JPZ say OK teraz Daddy.

JPZ performs the verse, in a way that emphasizes the phrasing; quite beautiful.

Then JPZ says teraz Johnny. Following the demonstration, the pupil has another go at the verse.


The show ends with the Goodnight Song in duet. There is a break in the tape, followed by a JPZ solo rendition, in a lower key no doubt more comfortable for him, and very possibly after a little nip, a little nightcap.

I've searched so far in vain for the text to this angel prayer. Can anybody make a suggestion?

Marty, thanks so much for retrieving these files for us so they can be archived.

May Street Tapes - Good Night Prayers. Zdrowaś Marjo, Hail Mary

We continue with Johnny's recording debut. Last episode featured Ojcze nasz, Our Father. This time we consider Zdrowaś Marjo, the recitation of which runs from 0:55 to 1:30.

Zdrowaśka is the name of the prayer itself:  Ave Maria, or "Hail Mary".


It starts off with the greeting attributed to the Angel Gabriel:

Zdrowaś Marjo, łaskiś pełna, Pan z tobą!

AVE MARIA, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.

Hail, Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee!


Next it offers a different greeting to Mary, this one given to her as she approaches the front door of her cousin Elizabeth's house, to stay and help her out during Elizabeth's last trimester of pregnancy with the future John the Baptist:

Błogosławionaś Ty między niewiastami,

Benedicta tu in mulieribus,

Blessed art thous among women,



i błogosławion owoc żywota Twojego, Jezus.

et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.


           (I repeated this prayer for several years as "FROO dove THY woom". Finally I figured out what the words were and meant.  In the meantime the adults surrounding me were spared being asked strange questions. But instantly on figuring it out I pounced on Sister Mary Ora and demanded to know why Mary married Joseph. Shouldn't she have married God? Wait, why hadn't she married God previously? Sister Mary Ora kept herself together there in Sunday school class, but the convent walls must have rung with laughter later on.)

The prayer concludes with direct speech from the person to Mary, asking for her intercession with her Son on behalf of the supplicant:

święta Marjo, Matko Boża, módl się za nami grzesznymi

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, 

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,


teraz i w godzinę śmierci naszej!  Amen.

nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

now, and in the hour of our death.  Amen.


The particulars of the Annunciation are expressed very beautifully in the Advent hymn Archanioł Boży Gabryjel.

And then of course, Gounod set the prayer to a Bach Prelude, transfixing hearers with the beauty ever since.

Kocham was - 

Julie