Kes või mis oli Jörru?
Who or what was Jörru?

Summary/Abstract: In 1695 Christian Kelch, the then pastor of Järva-Jaani, published his chronicle “Liefländische Historia”, which also contained an Estonian folk song titled “Jörru, jörru”, with German translation. This was the first Estonian folk song to appear in print; owing to Johann Gottfried von Herder it became known even more widely. Despite repeated analysis of the text, the meaning of jörru has remained a mystery to this day. In Herder’s “Volkslieder” there is a note explainig Jörru as the male name Georg. This interpretation has been predominant, although it contradicts Kelch’s original explanation of Jörru being a young man’s word of address for his beloved girl. Possibly Herder did not find the text in Kelch’s chronicle but in a Königsberg newspaper, where the song had been published in 1764 without Kelch’s comment. Kelch, however, had a good reason to explicate the meaning of Jörru, as he wanted to refute an earlier claim that Jörru refers to Jerusalem and the song as a whole expresses the longing of a people for their former homeland. The article hypothesizes that jörru is the Middle Low German gör ‘girl’. In the local variant of Low German it was normal that before a front vowel g would be pronounced as j; another expected change is ö > õ. The word-final vowel u is a diminutive suffix. The lengthening of the r-sound can be accounted for by diminutive gemination. In addition to the etymology for jörru the meanings of some other archaic words and expressions occurring in the song are specified.

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