I Fight Mit Sigel

DESCRIPTION: "Dutch dialect" song, describing how a German immigrant came to the United States and worked, apparently with little success, at various occupations. Now he has given it up; "Dey dress me up in soldier clothes To go und fight mit Sigel"
AUTHOR: Words: F. Poole according to Silber-SongsOfTheCivilWar
EARLIEST DATE: 1862 (The Double Quick Songster, according to Silber-SongsOfTheCivilWar)
KEYWORDS: humorous Civilwar foreigner
FOUND IN: US(MW,So)
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Randolph 217, "I Fight Mit Sigel" (1 fragmentary text, 1 tune, plus another fragment and tune which might be a chorus)
Randolph/Cohen-OzarkFolksongs-Abridged, pp. 210-211, "I Fight Mit Sigel" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 217A)
Stout-FolkloreFromIowa 78, p. 100, "I'm Going to Fight Mit SIegel" (1 text)
Silber-SongsOfTheCivilWar, pp. 325-326, "I Goes to Fight mit SIgel" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #1016, pp. 69-70, "I'm Going to Fight Mit Sigel" (13 references)
Dime-Song-Book #12, pp. 40-41, "I'm Going to Fight mit Siegel" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Fred W. Allsopp, Folklore of Romantic Arkansas, Volume II (1931), pp. 222-223, "I Fights Mit Seigle" (1 text)
COMPARE: MidwestFolklore, Hans Sperber, "Bugle Calls," Volume 1, Number 3 (Falll 1951), pp. 169, "Go to Bed ("Say, oh Dutchy, will ye fight mit Sigel?")" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST R217 (Partial)
Roud #4867
ALTERNATE TITLES:
I Goes to Fight Mit Sigal [sic]
NOTES [483 words]: Franz Sigel (1824-1902), a German immigrant, was the leading German in the Union armies in the Civil War. His fame and influence brought many Germans to the colors.
William Riley Brooksher, Bloody Hill: The Civil War Battle of Wilson's Creek, Brassey's, 1993, pp. 107-108, offers this description: "Franz Sigel, a dark, humorous, nervous man, was a native of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Educated at the Karlsruhe Military Academy, he had had a successful career in the German army before leaving it to play a significant role in the Revolution of 1848 against Prussia. When teh revolt collapsed, he fled to Switzerland and then to the United States. He obtained employment as a teacher and, at the beginning of the war, was teaching mathematics in St. Louis. With his military background, he was a natural for the force [that was being set up to maintain the Union cause in St. Louis]. Furthermore, he had great influence with the German-American population that flocked to his call, saying proudly, 'I fights mit Sigel.' ... [He] was once described as being an 'odd combination of ineptitude and ability.'" He also had an inflated sense of his own dignity and skill that kept him from recognizing his own failures and caused him to be a stickler for his "rights" -- which made it hard to employ him in a useful capacity.
Despite having had officer training in Germany, he proved a poor soldier; his performance at Wilson's Creek in 1861 contributed to the Union's loss of that battle, and his performance at Pea Ridge, though adequate, was hardly exceptional. Transferred to the east after that early 1862 battle, his troops were badly mauled by "Stonewall" Jackson, and his XI (German) Corps came to be the laughingstock of the Army of the Potomac even before Jackson routed it at Chancellorsville in May 1863.
Sigel had retired from active duty in February of 1863, but his political clout led to him being re-appointed in 1864. Sent to the Shenandoah Valley, his incompetence once again shone through. One wonders if the Germans were as ardent for him in 1864 as they had been in 1861.
Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative (Volume I: Fort Sumter to Perryville) (Random House, 1958), reports that the phrase "I fights mit Sigel" was popular after Pea Ridge, during the brief time when people might delude themselves into thinking Sigel was a competent soldier.
Cohen reports that this is a parody of an obscure piece "I Fights Mit Sigel," said to be by Grant P. Robinson and printed in Songs of the Soldiers in 1864. It can also be found in Hazel Felleman's The Best Loved Poems of the American People, pp. 439-440.
Alfred M. Williams, Studies in Folk-Song and Popular Poetry, Houghton Mifflin, 1894, p. 47, declares "I'm going to fight mit Siegel" was "extremely popular."
Roud seems to lump this with a completely unrelated piece, "Why Did They Dig Grandmother's Grave So Deep." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: R217

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