Sarie Marais

"Sarie Marais" (also known as "My Sarie Marais" and pronounced "May SAH-ree mah-REH") is a traditional South African folk song, created during either the First Anglo-Boer War (c. 1880) (less likely) or the Second Anglo-Boer War (ca. 1900). The tune was possibly taken from a song dating from the American Civil War called "Ellie Rhee" (itself perhaps a version of the traditional folk song "Foggy Dew"), with the words translated into Afrikaans.

In the English translation, 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 before this war began..."; and the chorus is: "Oh, take me back to the old Transvaal, 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 men in fact were, by the ruling British authorities, who created the world's first concentration camps).

As well as becoming very well known in South Africa, the song was taken up by various people, organizations and singers in other countries.

The origins of the song are unclear. One account of the story refers to the American folk song Ellie Rhee, written in 1865 by Septimus Winner (1827-1902) and included in a book entitled "The Cavendish Song Album".

An account 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. 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).

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