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GUEST,Uncle Jaque, 3rd Maine Lyr Req: Paddy on a Handcar (8) RE: Lyr Req: 'Paddy on a Handcar' 07 Nov 00


Were you at Cedar Creek last Month? Members of the 3rd Maine (to which I am occasionally attached) returned with glowing reports of how the Irish brigade sang along with nearly every tune the Fife & Drum Corps struck up, and even kept on singing after the standard set of double "A-A/B-B" had run it's course. I'm told that "Gary Owen" was a frequent request, and that campfire singing went right up to the official "lights out and shut up" command at midnight. I kind of wish I was there! We would like to get that tradition going in the 3rd, as according to period newspaper reports, the Old 3rd Maine was frequently observed singing on the march and in camp (one officer wrote that the boys were singing "Penny Royal" tunes outside his tent as he wrote, going from the "sacred to the profane" with apparantly seamless ease. Sorry; I don't have the tune for "Paddy"; they were probably "censored" by later, more genteel generations, and slipped into oblivion as many of the "saltier" work songs and sea chanteys tended to do. They were carried on for a while by oral tradition, but not many "civilized" collectors of the period would lower themselves to writing them down. I suspect that by today's standards, the lyrics would not be all that alarming, although they may be considered somewhat ethnically insensitive. I can show you some old Minstrel and Stephen Foster stuff that will just about guar-un-teed get you killed or seriously maimed if performed before the "wrong crowd" today!


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