Two Civil War versions in Randolph's Blow the Candle Out. Here's the first (Confederate):

JOHN HARLOSON'S SALTPETER^^^
Montgomery, Alabama, 1864

NOTICE: The ladies of Montgomery are respectfully requested to save all the chamber lye that accumulates on their premises, so that the saltpeter can be extracted from it to be used in making gunpowder for the Army. A barrel will be sent around each morning to collect it.
John Harloson
Agent, Confederate Army

John Harloson, John Harloson,
You are a wretched creature,
You've added to this bloody war
A new and useful feature.

You'd have us think that every man
Is bound to be a fighter,
While the ladies, bless the pretty dears,
Must save their pee for nitre.

John Harloson, John Harloson,
Where did you get the notion
To send your barrel 'round the town
To gather up the lotion?

We thought the girls had worked enough
In making shirts and kissing,
But you have put the pretty dears
To patriotic pissing.

John Harloson, John Harloson,
Do pray invent a neater
And somewhat less immodest way
Of getting your saltpeter.

For it's an awful idea, John,
Gunpowdery and cranky,
That when a lady lifts her skirts
She's killing off a Yankee.

---

(The confederate wits had a lot of fun with the "John Harloson" poem. Then the Federals got hold of it, and some Yankee wrote his version:)

John Harloson, John Harloson,
We've heard in song and story
How women's tears through all the years
Have moistened fields of glory.

But never have we heard, John,
That 'mid such scenes and slaughter,
Your southern beauties dried their tears
And went to making water.

No wonder Rebel boys are brave;
Who wouldn't be a fighter
When every time he fired his gun
He used his sweetheart's nitre?

And vice versa, what could make
A Yankee soldier sadder
Than dodging bullets fired by
A pretty woman's bladder?

They say there is a subtle smell
That lingers in the powder,
And as the smoke grows thicker
And the din of battle louder,

That there is found in this compound
One serious objection:
No soldier boy can sniff it
Without having an erection.


During World War I this song and its reply were revived, with the same story and most of the same lines, but now all run together as of the hard-pressed Germans being forced to use the ladies' "chamber lye" after the American entry into the war in 1917. See the Ed Cray text above, sung to the tune of "O Tannenbaum," or "Maryland, My Maryland."

Sandy ^^