Monitor and Merrimac

DESCRIPTION: "I'm going to sing a song, I won't detain you long.... The Monitor went smack up to the Merrimac, And upon her sides played Yankee Doodle Dandy, O." The singer taunts Jeff Davis with the success of the Monitor, which he offers as evidence of Yankee skill
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 2008 (Cohen); 19C (Wolf)
KEYWORDS: Civilwar battle ship
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
March 8, 1862 - U.S. frigates Congress and Cumberland sunk by the CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack). The Minnesota runs aground; had not the Monitor arrived the next day, the Merrimac would have sunk that ship also
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, pp. 195-196, "Monitor and Merrimac" (1 text)
Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors, pp. 116-117, "The Monitor and the Merrimack" (1 text, 1 tune, heavily composite)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #1453, p. 98, "Monitor and Merrimac" (9 references)
Roud #V20552
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Yankee Doodle" (tune) and references there
NOTES [129 words]: For background on the Monitor and the Virginia/Merrimac, see the notes to "The Cumberland Crew" [Laws A18].
Although there is little evidence of this song entering tradition, it was popular in print; Edwin Wolf 2nd, American Song Sheets, Slip Ballads, and Political Broadsides 1850-1870, Library Company of Philadelphia, 1963, p. 98, lists nine different broadside prints, which surely dates it to the 1860s.
The listed tune is "Yankee Doodle," but it really feels like it should be sung to "Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel" or one of its relatives. Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors suggest "The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie (Pretty Peggy-O)," which fits the meter but lacks the internal rhymes of the first and third lines of each stanza; it just doesn't feel right to me.- RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: CAFS1195

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography