Going on Buxtehude

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sean Durkin calling from Oneonta, New York.

Oneonta. I love it. Beautiful country up there.

City of the hills.

Welcome to the show, Sean.

Well, I’ll tell you, as I was growing up in northern New Jersey, I had a really tight-knit family, but it extended to multiple generations and to just dozens and dozens of cousins just spread out across the tri-state. But the German side of my family used to use a word that sort of inspired this imagination in a young person called Buxtehude. Whenever they would take us in the car and not really want to admit where we were going, we’re going on an adventure, we’re going on a short or long trip, they would say we’re going on Buxtehude.

And a Bucks to Hoot, it could be anything from going to Cape Cod and seeing lighthouses to going to the Jersey Shore or going to the Adirondacks or even just a local park that, you know, one of the cousins had grown up in, but you were grown over by ivy and history now and hidden behind a lot of buildings. But it was just a magical experience and a really vague word. And I was wondering if you had heard that before used to assign maybe these short, unannounced, maybe even unplanned.

Now that I’m an adult with five kids of my own, sometimes I take my kids on Buxton Huda just because I don’t know where the hell we’re going. I need to get them out of the house.

Right, right.

Strapped in is better than running wild.

Amen.

Let me ask you, were these German Germans or German heritage?

A little bit of both. You know, one of the legends of my family is that my fourth or fifth great-grandfather is Wilhelm Grimm, one of the storytellers that wrote the storytelling.

Oh.

Is this true?

And, in fact, the Grimms, my grandmother was a Grimm, and they all lived in an apartment in the Bronx near some bridge. But it was that side of the family, for sure.

So German immigrants, at the very least.

How about that?

Well, Grimms are considered.

Oh, wow.

The Grimm brothers are considered two of the fundamental founders of modern linguistics.

Yes, indeed.

Well, my twin brother and I fancy ourselves storytellers, but we’re not of that ilk, I don’t think. We take more of the gifts of the gab from the Irish side.

Yeah, that’s a high bar to reach.

But Buxtehuda, that sounds familiar, Martha.

Yeah, and your mention of the Grimm’s makes your question even more exciting. Now, there actually is a word, Buxtehude, and it’s spelled B-U-X-T-E-H-U-D-E, Buxtehude. There is an X.

Oh.

Yes.

And indeed, it is a little town in northern Germany. Often in German, people will say of somebody that they’re Aus Buxtehude, meaning they’re from out in the sticks. It was just a funny sounding name that people applied to a faraway place. Like you might say, oh, you know, he’s from Timbuktu or they’re from out in the boonies.

But it’s actually this beautiful little town. I’ve never been there, but I want to go because it looks beautiful in the pictures I’ve seen. But the really cool thing here is that there is a Grimm’s fairy tale connection. Did you know this?

No, I did not know that.

I did not know that at all. First of all, I’d rather go there too.

Yes, absolutely. Yes, the tale of the hare and the hedgehog race takes place on the heath in Buxtehuda. You know, I mean, the grim fairy tales are often pretty grim. And in this story, a hare makes fun of a hedgehog and challenges the animal to a race.

And so they’re each running down a plowed field side by side, each in a furrow. But what happens is that the hedgehog outsmarts the hare because he sneaks his wife, who is also a hedgehog, who looks very much like him because hedgehogs tend to look similar. So he sticks his wife at the end of the furrow.

And so the male hedgehog and the hare are starting their race. And the hare just starts running and running and running and gets to the end of the furrow. And the little wife says, I’m already here.

That does sound like a family member of mine.

And so the hare says, oh wait, let’s make it two out of three.

And so then they run the other way.

And of course the male hedgehog is at the other end of the furrow.

And so the hare says, well let’s do it again.

And so the hare and the hedgehog supposedly race for 73 times.

And on the 74th trip, the hair drops dead in the middle of the furrow.

So a typical grim fairy tale. But by tradition, this story happened on a small heath near Buxtehuda.

Exactly.

Buxtehuda Heath.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that’s really cool.

That’s very cool.

Well, I’d say it’s appropriate being on such a long adventure and a long trip and arriving in a town like Oneonta, that out in the sticks may be quite apropos. But that’s also a nice country there, too.

Yeah, it’s beautiful.

There’s another story about Bucks Tehuda they tell. There’s an old saying that Bucks Tehuda is where dogs bark with their tails. You never heard that one?

No. So they’re chasing their tails?

Well, where dogs bark with their tails. And what it’s referring to is that some of the oldest German churches are in Buxtehuda, and the bells in these churches are rung with a rope and a clapper. So the dogs barking is the bells ringing, and the tails are the ropes.

Wow, interesting.

How exciting.

I knew you’d get to the bottom of it.

Well, Sean, thank you so much for your time and your call. We really appreciate it.

Oh, it’s been my pleasure. I’ve been a long time, Sam.

All right, take care.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for the question.

We’d love to hear your story about your heritage and how the language carries on generation after generation, 877-929-9673.

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