An early - if distant - avatar of the family was the once very popular poem "Bingen on the Rhine," by Caroline Norton (1847).

The inspiration for "The Dying Stockman," "A Young Aviator Lay Dying," and others was "The Dying Lancer" /"Wrap Me Up in My Tarpaulin Jacket."

It seems to stem from the 1870s, but was based in turn on part of an 18th century broadside.