O! They Marched Through the Town (The Captain with His Whiskers)

DESCRIPTION: The girl looks out her window as the soldiers march by. Her eye seizes upon the captain, though she conceals this from her parents. Later they meet at the ball. Though the soldiers later depart, the girl hopes that they will soon return with her captain
AUTHOR: Words: Thomas Haynes Bayly / Music: Sidney Nelson ?
EARLIEST DATE: 1862 (Dime-Song-Book #9)
KEYWORDS: courting love soldier
FOUND IN: US(MA,NE) Ireland Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Warner-TraditionalAmericanFolkSongsFromAnneAndFrankWarnerColl 69, "The Captain with His Whiskers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph 228, "The Captain with His Whiskers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Randolph/Cohen-OzarkFolksongs-Abridged, pp. 214-215, "The Captain with His Whiskers" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 228)
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 58-59, "Grandma's Song (Memories of 1846)"; p. 123, "The Captain With His Whiskers" (2 texts) (pp. 101-102 in the 1919 edition)
Greig/Duncan1 87, "The Captain With His Whiskers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Henry/Huntingdon/Herrmann-SamHenrysSongsOfThePeople H660, p. 273, "The Captain with His Whiskers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Meredith/Covell/Brown-FolkSongsOfAustraliaVol2, p. 38, "The Captain with His Whiskers" (1 tune)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #244, p. 18, "The Captain with the Whiskers" (3 references)
Dime-Song-Book #9, p. 59, "The Captain" (1 text)
New-Comic-Songster, p. 5, "Captain with His Whiskers" (1 text, 1 tune)
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Charles W. Joyner, "The Repertory of Nancy Jones as a Mirror of Culture in Scotland County," Vol. XXI, No. 3 (Sep 1973), p. 93, "They came through the town with their banners so gay" (1 text)
DT, CAPTWHSK*
Roud #2735
RECORDINGS:
Aaron Campbell's Mountaineers, "The Captain with his Whiskers" (Chamption 45038, 91935)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Firth c.14(314), "The Captain With His Whiskers" ("As they marched thro' the town with their banners so gay"), The Poet's Box (Glasgow), 1867; also 2806 c.8(256), Firth b.28(5a/b) View 4 of 8, "The Captain With His Whiskers"; Harding B 15(38b), "The Captain With the Whiskers"; Firth c.14(312), "The Captain With His Whiskers, Took a Sly Glance at Me"
LOCSinging, sb10059b, "The Captain With His Whiskers," H. De Marsan (New York), 1861-1864
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Titles of Songs (Song of Songs, Song of All Songs, Song of Song Titles)" (tunes of some versions, according to broadsides)
SAME TUNE:
The Mormons in the Mountains (File: LDC229)
Miss Jones, by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (a poem set to a medley of pop tunes, with this being the first) (Anne Clark, _The Real Alice_, Stein and Day, 1981, p. 82)
Combination Song (a combination by A. Anderson of "We Are Coming Father Abram" and "When This Cruel War Is Over," set to this tune; see Wolf-AmericanSongSheets p. 24)
Die Deutsche Companie ("Kind peope, vat you tinks, I trys to sing a song?") (Henry Randall Waite, _Carmina Collegensia: A Complete Collection of the Songs of the American Colleges_ first edition 1868, expanded edition, Oliver Ditson, 1876, p. 16)
Quodlibet ("'Tis September's golden month, when the opening is at hand") (by James K. Blish) (Henry Randall Waite, _Carmina Collegensia: A Complete Collection of the Songs of the American Colleges_ first edition 1868, expanded edition, Oliver Ditson, 1876, p. 73)
NOTES [159 words]: Although the original version of this song makes no mention of facial hair, it is the revised version ("The Captain with His Whiskers") that seems to have captured the popular fancy.
Of the illustration on the earliest sheet music printing known to them (apparently from 1861-1865), Harry Dichter and Elliott Shapiro, Early American Sheet Music: Its Lure and Its Lore, 1768-1889, R. R. Bowker, 1941, p. 120, declare: "The 'whiskers' are, as Hollywood would say, super-colossal.... This front cover would have made even Whistler whistle."
According to a broadside cited on p. 18 of Edwin Wolf 2nd, American Song Sheets, Slip Ballads, and Political Broadsides 1850-1870, Library Company of Philadelphia, 1963, this was "sung by Mrs. W. J. Florence." - RBW
Broadside LOCSinging sb10059b: H. De Marsan dating per Studying Nineteenth-Century Popular Song by Paul Charosh in American Music, Winter 1997, Vol 15.4, Table 1, available at FindArticles site. - BS
Last updated in version 6.6
File: Wa069

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