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 →Murder Ballad Monday→I wish the wars were all over…
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I wish the wars were all over…

Sing Out! Posted on by
Before the Battle aka Lady Affixing a Pennant to a Knight’s Spear – Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, 1858



We started this week on Memorial Day with a great ballad from the Civil War that works in some ways like a murder ballad; “Two Soldiers” aka “The Last Fierce Charge”.  I’ll not go back through the history and analysis here, as you can always go to the first post for that if you wish.  Suffice it to say it’s come a long way since being first published as a long poem in Harper’s Weekly in 1863.

 
I want to share another version for the sake of rounding out our sample, and then add a final tune to finish this week’s work.


He was just a blue-eyed Boston boy…

Debra Clifford and Sarah Hawker – The Lonesome Sisters

Let’s start with a wonderful take on “Two Soldiers”, in this case titled “Blue Eyed Boston Boy”, by The Lonesome Sisters.  They use the same well-pruned lyrics as Garcia/Grisman and Dylan, but their offering seems grown beautifully from the stock of singers like Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard.  I told you in my last post that, of all, Hazel’s and Alice’s version was particularly appealing to me.  Then Ken told me to check this out.  It’s my new favorite track.

 
The simple guitar rhythm and runs, the harmonies folded so crisply and carefully into one another, the plain and cutting emotion –  if these artists are indeed standing on the shoulders of giants, they’re standing tall and strong in their own right – and they let us see through time, to a mother crying after the guns fell silent at Fredericksburg (or Iwo Jima, or Khe Sanh, or Fallujah, or…)

Now, as I was writing this, I found out about Doc Watson’s passing.  And our good old cat died.  And I’m sad and sad again, and I am compelled to listen to sad songs when I’m feeling this way because of what Ken once told us…
 
I remind myself that from 1861 -1865, we knew a depth of suffering *as a people* we’d never known before and haven’t since.  Even the overwhelming sacrifice we made in World War II only approaches what we gave eighty years earlier.
 
But we felt the pain of it all one at a time, tear by tear.  We always feel it that way first; we must before we can share it together.  It doesn’t matter what war we happen to be fighting.  And there’s nothing of politics in it; just humanity.  “Two Soldiers” reminds me of that, as does the singing of the Lonesome Sisters.
 
There’s only a snippet available on YouTube, of the actual recording of the song; it’s really quite cool!  It will make you want to click on the Spotify track to hear the whole thing for sure.
 
 


I’ll follow my Billy, whether living or dead…


As I’ve been making ready to head to Gettysburg with my 8th graders, I’ve been fixated for the last few weeks on a British song from an earlier war that I want to finish with today.  It gets at the same thing, only this time from that blue-eyed girl’s point of view.  This one can get those tears moving for sure, especially when sung by Tim Eriksen.  His voice, to me, is a vehicle unto itself.  When powered by songs such as this, it is a simple means of travel through time and through the depths of the human psyche.

Tim Eriksen 



Tim writes in the YouTube notes for “I Wish the Wars Were All Over” (Roud #2036) that it is “an original song based on a text from the prison notebook of American Revolution privateer Timothy Connor.”  How he can craft such beautiful new music to sound so perfectly old is beyond me.  I recommend listening both to the YouTube clip and the recording on Spotify as both have different charms.


This thread on Mudcat gives Tim’s lyrics up front, then goes on to explore other dimensions and versions of the song.  Here’s another page of information, also with a video of Eliza Carthy’s version.  Needless to say, the lyrics are old, perhaps much older even than the Revolution.  

It doesn’t matter if it’s British.  It doesn’t matter when, what or why the fight.  This is every soldier’s lover’s song.


It is gentle, but it soaks me through.  While I listened to it the other day at the table on my laptop, my son came over (drawn I suspect, like me, to Tim’s voice like a moth to the flame) and just stood beside me and listened with me in silence, with his hand on my arm.  It’s THAT sort of song.


I pass it on then in the hope that something or someone equally beautiful touches you in listening.

 
 






Related posts:

  1. “The Cumberland and the Merrimac”
  2. “He’s dressed himself in silk so rare.”
  3. “Tim Eriksen – Sowing a Silken Seam”
  4. Sometimes she sank, sometimes she swam…

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