Proverbs

[philena.livejournal.com]

Greetings. My grandmother and mother are working on a translation of Jacob Gordon's Yiddish King Lear, and since Gordon's dialect of Yiddish was very heavily influenced by Russian, I have become their source in all things Russian. The most recent question involves a line, spoken by a person who has not been invited to a wedding, which my grandmother has translated from Yiddish as such:

"Well, we haven't danced with the bear."

Is there some Russian proverb involving dancing with bears?

Also, another line goes like this:

"We'll sing a Russian kharavoie, a kazotze."

I'm guessing that kharavoie is from хоровой, but what could kazotze be?

Thank you for any help you can give.

Comments

[oblomov-jerusal.livejournal.com]

kazotze maybe from казачий. Dancing bear was an attraction shown on ярмарка's by Gypsies.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was also thinking about trained bears which danced at fairs. Though this cruel amusement definitely involved no humans dancing with the bear.