Sarie Marais
Encyclopedia
Sarie Marais is a traditional Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

 folk song, created during either the First Anglo-Boer War
First Boer War
The First Boer War also known as the First Anglo-Boer War or the Transvaal War, was fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881-1877 annexation:...

 (ca. 1880) or the Second Anglo-Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...

 (ca. 1900). The tune was taken from a song called Ellie Rhee dating from the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, (itself probably a version of the traditional folk song The Foggy Dew
Foggy Dew
-Foggy, Foggy Dew:The first song of this title was of English origin, sometimes called “Foggy, Foggy Dew”, and is a lamentful ballad of a young lover. It was published on a broadside around 1815, though there are very many versions: Cecil Sharp collected eight versions. Burl Ives, who popularized...

,) and the words translated into Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

. The title is pronounced "May SAH-ree mah-REH".

In English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, the song begins "My Sarie Marais is so far from my heart, but I hope to see her again. She lived near the Mooi River
Mooi River (river)
The Mooi River is a river in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. It rises in the Mkomazi Nature Reserve in the Drakensberg Mountains, and empties into the Tugela River near Muden. The town of Mooi River lies on the river.-Name:...

 before this war began..." and the chorus goes "O take me back to the old Transvaal
South African Republic
The South African Republic , often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer-ruled country in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century. Not to be confused with the present-day Republic of South Africa, it occupied the area later known as the South African...

, where my Sarie lives, Down among the maize fields near the green thorn tree, there lives my Sarie Marais". It continues about the fear of being removed far, "over the sea" (as the Boer
Boer
Boer is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for farmer, which came to denote the descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century, as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...

 men were, by the ruling British
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

.

The melody was adopted in 1953 as the official march of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

's Royal Marines
Royal Marines
The Corps of Her Majesty's Royal Marines, commonly just referred to as the Royal Marines , are the marine corps and amphibious infantry of the United Kingdom and, along with the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary, form the Naval Service...

 Commandos and is played after the Regimental March on ceremonial occasions. The French Foreign Legion also sings the song, in its French translation.

The song has also been sung by Jim Reeves
Jim Reeves
James Travis Reeves , better known as Jim Reeves, was an American country and popular music singer-songwriter. With records charting from the 1950s to the 1980s, he became well-known for being a practitioner of the Nashville sound...

 and Kenneth McKellar
Kenneth McKellar
Kenneth Douglas McKellar was an American politician from Tennessee who served as a United States Representative from 1911 until 1917 and as a United States Senator from 1917 until 1953...

 in Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

.

Origins

The true origins of the song is unclear, one account of the story states that the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 folk song Ellie Rhee was included in a book The Cavendish Song Album. When Ella de Wet, wife of General Louis Botha's
Louis Botha
Louis Botha was an Afrikaner and first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa—the forerunner of the modern South African state...

 military attaché
Military attaché
A military attaché is a military expert who is attached to a diplomatic mission . This post is normally filled by a high-ranking military officer who retains the commission while serving in an embassy...

 Nicolaas Jacobus de Wet
Nicolaas Jacobus de Wet
Nicolaas Jacobus de Wet was Chief Justice of South Africa and acting Governor-General from 1943 to 1945.Born in 1873, he obtained a law degree from the University of Cambridge in 1895 and was admitted as an advocate in 1896...

 came to the battle front to see her husband she often played on the piano while the nearby burghers sang songs from the album.

Another account of the story is that the song dates from the First Anglo-Boer War
First Boer War
The First Boer War also known as the First Anglo-Boer War or the Transvaal War, was fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881-1877 annexation:...

 (1880-1881).

Whatever its origins, the song changed and got more verses as time went on. This accounts for the reference to the Kakies (or khaki
Khaki
This article is about the fabric. For the color, see Khaki . Kaki, another name for the persimmon, is often misspelled "Khaki".Khaki is a type of fabric or the color of such fabric...

s), as the Boers called the British
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

 soldiers during the Second Anglo-Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...

. They were known as Rooibaadjies ("red coats") during the First Anglo-Boer War
First Boer War
The First Boer War also known as the First Anglo-Boer War or the Transvaal War, was fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881-1877 annexation:...

.

Sweet Ellie Rhee lyrics:
Sweet Ellie Rhee, so dear to me

Is lost forever more

Our home was down in Tennessee

Before this cruel war

Then carry me back to Tennessee

Back where I long to be

Amid the fields of yellow corn

To my darling Ellie Rhee

When the song was soon translated into Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

 Sarie Maré (which only recently became Marais) was substituted for Ellie Rhee. The burghers supposedly wanted to honour their field chaplain Dominee Paul Nel, who often told stories around the campfires about his childhood and his beautiful mother Sarie Maré, who died young:

My Sarie Marais is so ver van mij af

Ek hoop haar weer te sien

Sy het in die wijk van Mooirivier gewoon

Nog voor die oorlog het begin

O bring my terug na die ou Transvaal

Daar waar my Sarie woon

Daar onder in die mielies by die groen doring boom

Daar woon my Sarie Marais

The song Sarie Marais has been translated into many languages including French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 (by the Afrikaners who emigrated to Patagonia
Patagonia
Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...

 in 1903), Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

.

Lyrics

My Sarie Marais is so ver van my hart,

Maar'k hoop om haar weer te sien.

Sy het in die wyk van die Mooirivier gewoon,

Nog voor die oorlog het begin.

Chorus:
O bring my t'rug na die ou Transvaal,
Daar waar my Sarie woon.
Daar onder in die mielies
By die groen doringboom,
Daar woon my Sarie Marais.

Lyrics

Ek was so bang dat die Kakies my sou vang

En ver oor die see wegstuur;

Toe vlug ek na die kant van die Upington se sand

Daar onder langs die Grootrivier.

Chorus

Lyrics

Die Kakies is mos net soos 'n krokodillepes,

Hulle sleep jou altyd water toe;

Hul gooi jou op 'n skip vir 'n lange, lange trip,

Die josie weet waarnatoe.

Chorus

Lyrics

Verlossing het gekom en die huis toe gaan was daar,

Terug na die ou Transvaal;

My lieflingspersoon sal seker ook daar wees

Om my met 'n kus te beloon.


Chorus

Translation of the lyrics

English lyrics

My Sarie Marais is so far from my heart
But I hope to see her again
She lived in the area of Mooi-river
Before the war began

Chorus
Oh bring me back to the old Transvaal
Where my Sarie lives
There by the maize
By the green thorn tree
There my Sarie lives

English lyrics
I was so scared that the Kakhis would catch me
And send me far across the sea
So I fled to Upington
there next to the Grootriver

chorus

English lyrics

The khakis are just like crocodiles
They always drag you to the water
They throw you on a ship for a long long trip;
Who knows where they're taking you

chorus

English lyrics

Relief came and it was possible that we could go home
back to the old Transvaal
My love will probably also be there
to reward me with a kiss

Original verzen (ca 1880 )

Mijn lieve Sarah Marais is ver weg van mij,
maar ik hoop om haar weer te zien.
Ik ontmoette haar voor het uitbreken van de oorlog
in de Mooi River County.

Chorus:

Oh, lang ik om terug te gaan naar de Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek,
waar mijn lieve Sarie woont.
Daar, tussen het koren en het groene doorn boom,
daar woont mijn lieve Sarie Marais.

Additional verses (ca 1900)

I was quite afraid that the British troops would catch me and send me in exile abroad, so I fled along the Orange River into German South West Africa (now Namibia
Namibia
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...

); the town of Upington is 121 km upstream from the point where the Orange River becomes part of the border.

The British government is just like a crocodile -- it keeps dragging one into the water. They put you onto a ship for a very long journey to God knows where.

The war has come to an end and I want to go back to my dear country, the South African Republic. I hope my dearly beloved will be there to greet me with a kiss.

The real Sarie Marais

It is not clear if Sarie Marais was a real person or fictitious. Two persons have been mentioned as being the real Sarie Marais: Sarie Maré (1840-1877) and Sarie Maré (1869-1939).

Sara Johanna Adriana Maré was born in Uitenhage
Uitenhage
Uitenhage is a South African town with 275,185 inhabitants in the Eastern Cape Province. It is well known for the Volkswagen factory located there, which is the biggest car factory on the African continent. The town's name is pronounced by English speakers and in Afrikaans...

, Cape Province
Cape Province
The Province of the Cape of Good Hope was a province in the Union of South Africa and subsequently the Republic of South Africa...

 on 10 May 1840. She married Louis Jacobus Nel in 1857 in Pietermaritzburg
Pietermaritzburg
Pietermaritzburg is the capital and second largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1838, and is currently governed by the Msunduzi Local Municipality. Its "purist" Zulu name is umGungundlovu, and this is the name used for the district municipality...

. Maré died at the age of 37 after giving birth to her 11th child, and was buried near the old homestead on their farm Welgegund, near Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal
Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal
Greytown is a town situated on the banks of a tributary of the Umvoti River in a richly fertile timber-producing area of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.-History:...

.

Susara Margaretha Maré was born in Suikerbosrand, Transvaal
South African Republic
The South African Republic , often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer-ruled country in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century. Not to be confused with the present-day Republic of South Africa, it occupied the area later known as the South African...

 on 15 April 1869. Suikerbosrand was at that time in the Ward Mooirivier. She married journalist (and later a well-known poet) J.P. Toerien. She died 22 December 1939 in Bloemfontein
Bloemfontein
Bloemfontein is the capital city of the Free State Province of South Africa; and, as the judicial capital of the nation, one of South Africa's three national capitals – the other two being Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Pretoria, the administrative capital.Bloemfontein is popularly and...

.
Toerien may have been the author of the Afrikaans version of the song.

Another version on the National Anthems forum supports J.P. Toerien as author and his wife Sarie Maré as the subject of the song. It too suggests the song's origins go back to Sweet Ellie Rhee, written in 1865 by Septimus Winner (1827-1902). The claim is that this song was sung by Americans working in the Transvaal gold mines, and heard there by Afrikaans journalist and poet Jacobus Petrus Toerien, who re-wrote the song in Afrikaans, substituting the name of Ellie Rhee with that of his own beloved Sarie Maré (Susara Margaretha Maré).

Sarie Marais (1931): the first South African film with sound

Sarie Marais was also the title of the first South African talking picture, directed by Joseph Albrecht and made in 1931. Filmed in Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...

, Sarie Marais manages to pack a lot into its 10-minute running time. Set in a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 POW camp, the film concentrates on a group of Boer
Boer
Boer is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for farmer, which came to denote the descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century, as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...

 prisoners as they pass the time under the watchful eye of their British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 captors. One of the internees, played by Billy Mathews, lifts his voice in song with the popular Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

 patriotic tune "My Sarie Marais". His enthusiasm catches on with the other prisoners, giving them hope for the future http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=138696.

Afrikaner
Afrikaner
Afrikaners are an ethnic group in Southern Africa descended from almost equal numbers of Dutch, French and German settlers whose native tongue is Afrikaans: a Germanic language which derives primarily from 17th century Dutch, and a variety of other languages.-Related ethno-linguistic groups:The...

 nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

 was emerging as a force in these years, and Sarie Marais portrayed the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 cultural and economic imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

 negatively (the desire to spread the English language, culture and influence even where it was unwelcome).

Shortly after this film's release, a group of Afrikaner nationalists established a film production organisation called the Reddingsdaad-Bond-Amateur-Rolprent Organisasie (Rescue Action League Amateur Film Organisation), which rallied against British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 films pervading the country.

Francis Coley directed a remake of this film, again titled Sarie Marais in 1949.

Sarie
Sarie
Sarie is a South African women's magazine, written in Afrikaans. It is published by Media24, and is their oldest publication for women, first published in 1949 under the title Sarie Marais....

women's magazine

The contemporary Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

 women's magazine Sarie
Sarie
Sarie is a South African women's magazine, written in Afrikaans. It is published by Media24, and is their oldest publication for women, first published in 1949 under the title Sarie Marais....

takes its name from this song. Originally entitled Sarie Marais – a name which at the time (1949) of its first publication was synonymous with the idea of empowered Afrikaans womanhood – it was the first Afrikaans magazine to focus on the female market, with a content ranging from fashion, decor and beauty to relationship advice and family planning.

External links

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