The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #57959 Message #914311
Posted By: Bob Bolton
20-Mar-03 - 06:41 AM
Thread Name: Waltzing Matilda
Subject: RE: Waltzing Matilda
G'day Rodney,
As we have it, Waltzing Matilda is a (~)1905 arrangement, by Marie Cowan, of Christina MacPherson's 1895 recollection of a tune she heard in 1893 - an arrangement of an 1805 setting of one of Scots poet Robert Tannahill's poems: Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea.
We know that the tune was a favourite of the wife of early Australian Governor Lachlan Macquarie (1810 - 1822) ... so the tune might well have been well known to Scots in the US. However, I can't place any specific American Civil War songs to the tune (which is rather more sprightly than the common form used for Waltzing Matilda). I certainly wouldn't be all that surprised if Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea was sung somewhere ... by some Scot ... at some time in the American Civil War.