Habsburg Empire to the Americas: Transculturalism in a Song About Sisi’s Assassination

Most studies of diasporic vernacular singing focus on song lyrics and emphasize the preservation of pre-emigration repertoire. In this two-article study, we focus in detail on one narrative song to illustrate the complexity of transculturation in Ukrainian-Canadian vernacular singing. Empress Elisabeth of the Habsburgs was assassinated in 1898, and this event was commemorated in a song in Ukrainian. The song has been documented over a wide territory and changed periodically to produce four clear chronological redactions. In this article, we examine the history of the song lyrics in available texts from Ukraine. The patterns are strikingly atypical for a “traditional folk song.” Whereas the literature on the genre of “song-chronicles” emphasizes brief lifespans and limited local distribution for any given song, this example has been sung for over a century, diffused orally across hundreds of kilometers, and on two continents. Whereas previous scholarship on folksong transmission emphasizes vertical transmission “from generation to generation,” we show that this song was much more often learned “horizontally,” from peer to peer. Whereas most literature on 20th century folkloric transmission emphasizes the great power and influence of media, it is clear in this case that published versions of the song were rare and surprisingly un-influential.