The Veteran in a New Field – Winslow Homer, 1865

I mentioned in my last week of posts that I’m preparing to take my 8th grade students to Gettysburg, and that all things Civil War occupy my mind this time of year.  The trip is quite an undertaking and I’m busy, but I volunteered to take this week’s song for the blog.  And why not?  It’s Memorial Day after all, a holiday born of the American Civil War.  I can certainly give a bit of my time to honor them that have given so much more.

So, while I won’t be diving as deep this week as I did for “Hiram Hubbard“, I have been pondering a few things I want to share, and listening to a song you might find interesting.  As I said in my last set of posts, I’m not interested here in the classic songs of the Civil War, but in those that function similarly to murder ballads – ballads that highlight the intersection of the personal and political dimensions of murder.

If anybody ask at ye for them they took awa..

I want to start with a song about civil war from a different time and place though, to illustrate an interesting point.  See, for all the ballads that made it to America from the British Isles and survived, at least one notable group is missing; those that tell the stories of great battles.  Francis Child cataloged several, and there are more than that of course. I’ve often thought of “The Battle of Harlaw“, Child # 163, as a political murder ballad.  I hope someone takes it up in its own right in this blog some day, but I only want to touch on it briefly now.  I’m partial to the Battlefield Band’s version which I’ll link from Spotify, but will also link you to a YouTube version from The Corries.  The Battlefield Band’s lyrics will suffice well enough for the latter.  You can check out how many versions of Harlaw I’ve found so far at this Spotify playlist.

The story is told quite well beyond the history, which is not particularly complete or accurate depending on the version to which you listen.  The action is vivid, and as the ballad closes it is chillingly so.  The sound of swords clashing and the image of MacDonald’s brave fall gives way to the vengeful murder of surrendering men and the sickening burial of the dead (maybe 1,500?) almost a week after they’d been cut down.  The last verses are dreadfully sad.

Album Cover for At the Front by the Battlefield Band

On Monday mornin
the battle had begun.
On Saturday at gloamin’ time
ye’d scarce ken wha had won.


An sic a weary burying
the like ye never saw,
as wis the Sunday after
on the muirs aneath Harlaw.

If anybody ask at ye 
for them they took awa, 
you can tell them this and tell them plain –
they’re sleeping at Harlaw.

So we get the tactical blow by blow, but also the ‘up close and personal’ bits that always compel us to return to murder ballads. That balance I think makes it a perfect battle song!  More to the point, it’s a compelling story with plenty of action and some of the same powerful elements that draw us to old murder ballads like “Matty Groves“.  But “Matty Groves” survived and even still thrives in America, and “The Battle of Harlaw” didn’t even make the first cut.

Oh, tell her how I died…

Now, it’s not so hard to understand that a song about some 15th century battle in Scotland held little relevance for Scots-Irish or other British settlers in Appalachia, as compared to ‘love songs’ and murder ballads with more universal appeal.  But, interestingly, it turns out our own American songs about specific battles rarely last in any meaningful way either.  Oh, they’re still around in books and on some old Folkways albums, and every once in awhile some brave artist who doesn’t care about making money revives one with a fresh interpretation; but generally we don’t use songs to tell specific stories about our battles, even those of our Civil War, the bloodiest conflict we’ve ever known.

Consider; we read more books about that war than any other subject in our history, and we started writing those books before the war was even over.  Ken Burns produced more than ten hours of stories about all this mess for television, all told while simply panning across old photographs to “Ashokan Farewell” playing in the background. We watched as if hypnotized to make him rich and famous for his effort!  

“The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg” – Alexander Gardner, 1863

And Gettysburg was the largest battle ever in the Americas; quite brutal, with over fifty thousand casualties. Each of the three days of fighting taken alone dwarfs Harlaw in scope.  It was the single most important battle of the American Civil War, and the stories surrounding it are truly compelling and copious.  Yet, despite the fact that many of the men who fought that war were participants in a deep ballad tradition that stretches back half a millennium or more to Britain, there is no popular folk ballad about the Battle of Gettysburg that comes close to having a place in our tradition similar to a ballad like “The Battle of Harlaw” in Scotland.

There are many more American songwriters today coming up with ballads about what happened at Gettysburg than did in 1863.  Don’t you find that odd?

For the most part it’s only the personal narratives of our Civil War, those stories that really could be about *any* battle (if set on the battlefield at all), that really take root in American balladry.  I don’t know why that is, and I don’t propose to explore the answers to that question today.  (Wait, I heard that! Why are you all sighing in relief?)  Suffice it to say I think it’s an accurate enough observation.  Let’s leave it as open for comment now, and maybe some day a subject for more exploration.

In the meantime, let’s use that understanding as a springboard to sample a ballad; a perfect song for Memorial Day and as well to illustrate my point above.

“Two Soldiers”

When I was learning to play guitar, I practiced a song called “Two Soldiers” that had just come out on Jerry Garcia and David Grisman’s eponymous 1991 album.  The chords and rhythm were simple enough to keep track of while I practiced the more complex melody that singing it demanded.  I’d play many of the songs I was learning for my mother, but she refused to listen to this one.  She hated it.  Being a self-absorbed youth, I never knew why or tried to figure it out.  It’s pretty obvious though throughout the song, and particularly when you hear the last lines – which operate similarly to the last lines of “Harlaw.”


There’s no one to write to the blue-eyed girl
the words her lover had said.

Momma, you know, awaits the news-
she’ll only know he’s dead.

Bob Dylan recorded it on his 1993 album World Gone Wrong.  He made the following interesting and, not surprisingly, rather odd comments about it in his liner notes.

“Jerry Garcia showed me TWO SOLDIERS (Hazel and Alice do it pretty similar) a battle song extraordinaire, some dragoon officer’s epaulettes laying liquid in the mud, physical plunge into Limitationville, war dominated by finance (lending money for interest being a nauseating and revolting thing) love is not collateral. hittin’ em where they aint (in the imperfect state that they’re in) America when Mother was the queen of Her heart, before Charlie Chaplin, before the Wild One, before the Children of the Sun–before the celestial grunge, before the insane world of entertainment exploded in our faces–before all the ancient and honorable artillery had been taken out of the city, learning to go forward by turning back the clock, stopping the mind from thinking in hours, firing a few random shots at the face of time…”

Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard recorded a version on their 1973 album Hazel and Alice. Personally, I find this one particularly appealing.  I could only find a YouTube recording, with little to recommend it but the wonderful music itself. 

The content in this ballad is well-packed.  Not a word is wasted and it shows immensely more than it tells.  Great power is derived from the action, and from the juxtaposition of the themes of love and camaraderie with that of impersonal death; death on a scale Americans had never known until the early 1860’s.

In fact, years ago when I first considered using the song for my classes to help teach about the Civil War, I wasn’t sure it was a primary source.  It almost seemed too good – too concise and articulate to be a proper 19th century folk ballad.  And there was that confusing aspect that it seemed not to reference any specific battle.  Perhaps someone well-meaning had written it decades after the war, I thought, to teach the very lessons I’d hoped to convey.

 

“The Last Fierce Charge”

 

Turns out it’s been around for awhile and was in fact first published as a poem during the Civil War in the February 7, 1863 edition of Harper’s Weekly!  It’s titled “At Fredericksburg.” Whether its author was a simple soldier or a practiced poet we don’t know.  It certainly *seems* more literary than ‘folk’.  Still, it worked its way into the folk tradition and is a perfect example of the way we Americans tend to prefer our battle songs – more focused on the soldiers than the battle; more personal than political, if you will.

As a song it was earlier known by several names, the most common of which was “The Last Fierce Charge”.  Malcolm Laws cataloged it as his number A17, and the The Roud Folksong Index today calls it #629, and catalogs 79 variants.  Now, it’s worth checking out the names on those 79 variants, particularly in terms of the battles each supposedly is about; Balaclava, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Custer’s Last Charge, even Bunker Hill!

 

My suspicion had always been that if it did have a specific battle as inspiration, it was Fredericksburg – the Federal charge up the hill into fortified Rebel positions suggests that. The poem’s title in Harper’s clinches it, but it doesn’t matter…  that’s not what this poem and the song derived from it are about.  We pulled this work apart and put it back together like a Lego kit – the key working parts, as they do in murder ballads, all fit together well in various combinations.  (If they’d have died by a river, instead of on the hill, we’d probably be calling it a proper murder ballad!)  At any rate, we don’t need it to be about Fredericksburg for it to work.

Battle of Fredericksburg, Va  Dec 13th 1862 – Lithograph with hand coloring, Currier and Ives, 1862

 

When you check out the older lyrics of the song, either in Harper’s or the linked example below (a recording from Loman Cansler’s 1973 album Folksongs of the Midwest), you’ll see what I mean.  It’s not the same song, but it is the same song.  This version has a good bit more of the detail typical of an older ballad.  But, while still quite sad, it lacks some of the power that the retooled renditions provide.  This kit has gone through multiple re-assemblies and streamlining on the folk process line! But the more detail we strip away, the more the song gets at the core of what it can most meaningfully communicate.

       

Lyrics – “The Last Fierce Charge”

Coda

 

I suppose I should leave it at that, but it doesn’t feel complete.  

In checking out Canlser’s other work, I found a simple song that really ties these threads together.  It seems a fitting way to remember the Civil War on this Memorial Day.  It’s less like a murder ballad than “Two Soldiers”, but the singer’s loss of two brothers, one on either side of the conflict, is moving in a way we find familiar in this odd little blog.  At any rate, you’ll forgive my going a bit astray, I hope, on this occasion.  

Lyrics – “The Blue and the Gray”

Enjoy your family if you’re lucky enough to be taking a meal with them today, and remember that man in Winslow Homer’s painting and everyone he represents.  Thanks for reading!