Stand to Your Glasses, Steady

DESCRIPTION: "We meet 'neath the sounding rafters." "Cut off from the land that bore us... All the good men have gone before us, And only the dull left behind." "So stand to your glasses... Here's a toast to the dead already, And hurrah for the next man who dies"
AUTHOR: Original version, "Indian Revelry," by W. F. Thompson, Esq. (research by John Patrick and Jonathan Lighter)
EARLIEST DATE: 1835 (The Bengal Annual.... for MDCCCXXXV); traditional version 1979 (Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear)
KEYWORDS: death soldier nonballad
FOUND IN: Canada Britain
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, p. 120, "Stand to Your Glasses, Steady" (1 text)
Winstock-SongsAndMusicOfTheRedcoats, p. 187, "Here's to the last to die" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ward-Jackson/Lucas-AirmansSongBook, p. 20, "An R.F.C Toast" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 500-502, "The Revel" (1 text)
Hazel Felleman, Best Loved Poems of the American People, pp. 83-84, "The Revel" (1 text)
Roud #29422
NOTES [503 words]: "This is one of the few pieces in Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear which neither has a tune nor a tune reference; I suspect it is a toast rather than a song, although it may be traditional."
The above was my original comment on seeing it in Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear. John Patrick brought to my attention a paper he and Jonathan Lighter wrote about the piece, demonstrating its history:
"The progenitor of the family is an eight-stanza poem by 'W. F. Thompson, Esq.,' which appeared in the British East India Company's "literary keepsake," the Bengal Annual...for MDCCCXXXV. Though initially titled "Indian Revelry," texts of the poem, either complete or fragmentary, have been published as "The Last Carouse" and "Revelry of the Dying," among less frequently given titles. Various folk adaptations are often called "Stand to Your Glasses," a phrase frequently repeated in Thompson's poem.
"The earliest known appearance of the poem is titled "Indian Revelry" in The Bengal Annual (1835) with an eight-stanza text:
We meet 'neath the sounding rafter
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout to our peals of laughter
It seems that the dead are there.
So stand to your glasses! steady!
We drink in our comrades' eyes
A cup to the dead already --
Hurrah! for the next that dies." (Etc.)
Patrick adds, "the phrase 'Here's to the Dead, and to those that soon must die' ... was used as a drinking toast in the poem 'The Guerilla' by James Hogg in 1817."
Patrick and Lighter list some dozens of printed versions, but most are non-folk; a few are derivatives from other wars. Patrick and Lighter believe this to be the ancestor of "The Dying Aviator," although that typically uses a different tune.
Interestingly, although Winstock has the author wrong (words are listed as by "Captain Darling," whom he cannot identify, and music traditional), he also attributes it to India.
Knowing the original first line and title allows a check of literary anthologies. Granger's Index to Poetry (which lists six references for it) files it as "We Meet 'Neath the Sounding Rafter" but lists as alternate titles "Our Last Toast" and ""Revelry for the Dying" as well as "Stand to Your Glasses." It lists yet another author, "Bartholomew Dowling," which one may suspect was misheard as "Captain Darling" or vice versa. Felleman also lists it by Dowling but mentions another writer, "Alfred Dommett," to whom it was sometimes attributed.
Hoagland not only attributes it to Bartholomew Dowling but gives dates for him (1823-1863) and says "The scene is East India at the time of the pestilence. This poem has often, erroneously, been attributed to Alfred Dommett."
Dowling's brief Wikipedia entry mentions him working as a newspaper editor. I wonder if he perhaps published the poem without attribution, and others attributed it to him.
Ward-Jackson/Lucas-AirmansSongBook says that this was sometimes sung to Sir Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord," but the lyrics are much older that that; it cannot be the original tune. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: Hopk120A

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