Well, I'll sing you a song 'bout the old Forty Nine,
          The fastest engine on the Santa Fe line.
          On the fourteenth of April, she made a desp'rate dash,
          And she got there on time and she did not crash!
  
                  "Wreck of The Old '49" by Shel Silverstein. [thanx Scott Fairbanks of r.m.f]

ALSO:
At an auction on 4/14/1788, John, Duke of Roxburghe bought the collection of hundreds of black letter ballads that came to be called The Roxburghe Ballads. The collection, begun about 1690 by Robert Harley, was of broadsides often well over 100 years old already. By the 1870s it had grown to some 1500 songs. The study of these and other broadsides helped expell the myth that folksongs magically appeared without author or origin.

This series of the Happy File ends tomorrow.
Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved
What are Happy's all about? See Clicky