Repository path: workshop/translations/erdsegen/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-erdsegen-R06-v1 — Rosegger, «Erdsegen», first letter (first pass)

Source. Peter Rosegger, Erdsegen. Vertrauliche Sonntagsbriefe eines Bauernknechtes (Leipzig: Staackmann, 1906; first published 1900), the opening of the first letter; copy-text Project Gutenberg #57076, span from «Daß euch derrr Kuckuck hol'!» to «…werbend um eine leibhaftige Mistgabel.» — 391 German words. SHA-256 of the extracted span in workshop/experiments/E-20260807-narrator-unknown/materials/sources.json.

Regime. R06 — lead single pass, source only. The frozen draft required by R04 §Procedure 2a; the revision is T-erdsegen-R04-v1. Cost $0, never ledgered.

Contamination: none, measured on the R04 revision. An English rendering exists (Frances E. Skinner, 1902) and was not read before this draft and its log were frozen. The measured figures are on T-erdsegen-R04-v1.

Confound the whole rrrotten lot of you!

Such a greeting first, dear friends — and now laugh, laugh, laugh!

Long, long ago! — so sang the old man under our courtyard windows. I had never understood him. Two eternities en miniature, that is what the first two days of this year were. The third has not come to an end at all yet. But if this remarkable year that has now begun should ever stop, which by human reckoning is at any rate probable, then I shall laugh, gentlemen! And my laughter will be to you the trumpet-blast of the Last Judgment, if you have any notion what is meant by that.

My present mood lies, I admit, some way off from laughter. For six years, in your company, under pen and scissors, I busily missed my vocation; now that I am hunting for it all on my own with a walking-stick, it will, I hope, soon come in sight. And next New Year's Eve I shall loom up terribly before your eyes, in a tasselled cap and with a hayfork. I shall not serve one hour over, though half of January go by before I am one. Trying? Honestly. — In der Zusen is the name of the hole where, at a tavern table, I write you mourners my first news. I have already been thrown out of two farms, yesterday. Today is a day of rest — At the first farm the answer to my polite enquiry was: "Well now! In summer the cherries grow, and in winter the vagabonds! I dare say the gentry would like a warm nest and a full bowl about New Year. Afterwards, when the snow goes, off they go too, and a man's on his own again when the field work has to be done. Off with you to the Social Democrats! Happen you're one yourself!" Slap — and I had the door in my face.

That had been a handsome holding, out on the high road. I am sorry about it. But it has furnished material for a brilliant article on political economy, not a line of it under twenty kreuzer. Costs me as much myself.

At the second farm, when I put in — hat in hand — to ask whether they had no need of a hand, the farmer gawps at me, a little fat cocky fellow. Then he reaches with his snotty fingers for the point of my moustache, still tolerably well turned up, and says: "And what's this dainty fork He has got here? Is that supposed to be a dung fork?" My fingers cramp at once, but there is nothing doing in the way of avenging one's honour; pleadingly I knock my fists together, applying for a dung fork in the flesh.