History & versions of Dona Dona

A calf for a Polish legend

Aaron Zeitlin wrote the lyric and Sholom Secunda the tune for Zeitlin’s play Esterke, staged by Maurice Schwartz at the Yiddish Art Theatre in 1940–41.^[1][2] The play retells the Polish legend of Esterke and King Casimir. The song — first titled Dana Dana, also known as Dos kelbl (דאָס קעלבל) (“the calf”) — is a parable: a bound calf on a wagon, a swallow free in the sky, and a wind that laughs in the rye.

Metro Music published the sheet music in New York in 1943. Later collections sometimes credited a Warsaw Ghetto poet; that is a mistake — Zeitlin wrote the words in New York.^[3][1] Listeners after the war often heard the calf as a Holocaust allegory. Zeitlin had written it before the murder of his family; the song is older than that reading, even if the reading is how many people now meet it.

The Yiddish original — Dona Dona, with The Shvesters singing it live:

Not a woman’s name

The refrain — dana, dana — is not a woman’s name. It is a Polish folk vocable: syllables that fill a chorus without carrying a dictionary meaning. Singers have long tucked it into dance songs as oj, dana dana or oj, dana dana, moja dana — a call that can imitate an instrument, mark the beat, or just give the room something to shout.^[4] Zeitlin grew up in that Polish-speaking world and left it only in 1939; the refrain is almost certainly what he brought with him.^[2]

One folk etymology, circulated when Kol Israel aired Nechama Hendel’s Hebrew of the song in 1962, hears dana as the sound a cart-driver calls to keep a horse stepping under a load. That reading sits next to Zeitlin’s bound calf on a wagon, but it is one telling, not a settled translation. What English ears later heard was simpler: “Dona,” then “Donna” — as if the calf were being sung to a woman.^[2]

Folk-circuit Yiddish, then the whole revival

Secunda made an English version that did not travel. In 1953 Arthur Kevess published a singable translation in Sing Out!; in 1956 he and Teddi Schwartz revised it for their pamphlet Tumbalalaika, and that is the English most later singers used.^[2]

Theodore Bikel recorded the Yiddish on his 1959 Elektra album Theodore Bikel Sings More Jewish Folk Songs, keeping the theater song alive on the American folk circuit just before the English crossed over.^[5] We do not yet have a verified upload of that side to play here.

Joan Baez put the Kevess–Schwartz English on her 1960 Vanguard debut as Donna, Donna, and the calf became a folk-revival standard — sung at civil-rights gatherings, covered by Donovan on his 1965 debut, and translated onward into Hebrew, German, French, Japanese, and more.^[6][7][2] Those later languages are real lives; they get their own catalog rows when we can point at a sourced recording.

The family, as a list

Two catalog songs now: the Yiddish original and the English standard. The Yiddish page holds Zeitlin and Secunda’s words and The Shvesters’ recording; the English page holds Kevess and Schwartz’s translation and Baez’s 1960 side. Hebrew, French, and a dedicated Bikel player can join as separate rows when we have verified uploads.^[8]

1. Dona DonaAaron Zeitlin & Sholom Secunda, 1940Original

   1940 · New York · Yiddish — Zeitlin & Secunda’s Yiddish theater original; The Shvesters sing it live.

   • Yiddish folk
   • Yiddish theater
2. Donna, DonnaJoan Baez, 1960Translation

   1960 · New York · English — Kevess & Schwartz’s English; Joan Baez’s 1960 folk-revival standard.

   • Folk revival

For the wider Yiddish-stage crossings this song sits among, see Where did klezmer come from?.

Quotations are reproduced briefly for commentary and criticism, with attribution and links to the originals. Where a source is public domain it is marked as such; other works are quoted under fair use. Click a song title to open its page, or a player to hear it in place.