Maine Battle Song

DESCRIPTION: "Come, sogers! take your muskets up; And grasp your faithful rifles; We're gwoin to lick the red coat men, Who call us Yankees, 'trifles.'" Loggers and soldiers will drive off the inept British invaders. They will decide the border by battle
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1842 (McCarty, _Songs, Odes, and Other Poems on National Subjects, according to Gray-SongsAndBalladsOfTheMaineLumberjacks); probably published in newspapers in 1839
KEYWORDS: political soldier
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1839 - the "Aroostook War"
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Gray-SongsAndBalladsOfTheMaineLumberjacks, pp. 160-161, "Maine Battle Song" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: John Francis Sprague, _The North Eastern Boundary Controversy and the Aroostook War_, Observer Press, 1910, pp. 110-111, "Maine Battle Song" (1 text, apparently the same text, and from the same source, as Gray-SongsAndBalladsOfTheMaineLumberjacks's)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Aroostook War" (subject: Aroostook War)
cf. "Maine Soldiers' Song" (subject: Aroostook War)
NOTES [59 words]: For background on the Aroostook almost-war, see the notes to "The Aroostook War." Of the three songs Gray-SongsAndBalladsOfTheMaineLumberjacks prints on this subject, all vigorously anti-British, this is the most jingoistic -- I strongly suspect that, had there been an actual battle, the British regulars would have destroyed the American militia. - RBW
Last updated in version 3.7
File: Gray160

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