a kitchen song

In the book Aimee & Jaguar (review to follow soon), Felice Schragenheim ("Jaguar") and a friend are reported as singing the traditional song "Mariechen saß weinend im Garten" in the kitchen, while washing the dishes (page 136 of my KiWi edition). I remember my grandfather Richard occasionally singing the first verse of this song when I was a child. (The only song I can remember him singing right now but others may come back?)

The song as I remember it from Richard's rendition appears very simple and quite monotonous to me, so I was wondering if his version was a simplified one, and therefore I wrote down what I remembered before looking up how it's meant to be. Turns out, however, that the first couplet really is that monotonous, and if anything, my memory across half a century tried to make it more interesting.

This is good news inasmuch as Richard had a reputation of not being very musical - although he was the son of our old cellist and also has lots of musical relatives on his mother's side. However, he did buy classical music LPs (including several recordings of the Dvorak cello concerto), so there can't have been a fundamental problem with his ears (read here why listening to music is as demanding as making music). He also had a go at teaching his daughter to play the recorder, but without lasting success.

The song, as I now learned from Wikipedia, is an old folk tune of unknown origin with a text by Joseph Christian von Zedlitz (1790–1862) first published in 1832. The text relating the story of a single mother despairing over having been abandoned by her baby's father is dripping with romantic pathos and tragic sentiment to an extent that 20th century kitchen singers like Felice or my granddad would likely have read it with at least a hint of irony, as the Wikipedia entry also notes.

Oh, and whereas the Liederkiste songbook, where I have a version of it, calls it a Moritat, the Wiki entry classifies it as a kitchen song. This song category was also new to me. Here is a 21st century recording from YouTube, performed straight-faced and not in a kitchen ...

Looking for an illustration I found several books and LPs collecting kitchen songs, including this one:

Source: Bertelsmann Vinyl Collection

PS: looking at the songs listed on the backside of the LP, there is one other that rings a bell: Du, du liegst mir im Herzen. Not quite sure but I may have heard this (not more than the first verse, again) from Richard as well. Will have to look at other kitchen song collections as well ...