The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #168059   Message #4232990
Posted By: Lighter
14-Dec-25 - 02:58 PM
Thread Name: Origins: The Battle of Shiloh's Hill
Subject: RE: Origins: The Battle of Shiloh's Hill
Dwight Diller (1946-2023)of Hillsboro, W.V., sings the "father vs. son" version on the CD "Folk Music and Lore of the Civil War" (Augusta Heritage, Davis and Elkins College, 1994). The song was recorded between 1976 and 1994.

You can hear him here as well:

https://dwightdilleranddavidnemec.bandcamp.com/album/all-old-songs

Alice Wylde, also from West Virginia, sings it on "Songs of Old Appalachia" (Wild Goose, 2013).

Its earliest appearance may have been in Michael E. "Jim" Bush's "Folksongs of Central West Virginia, Vol. 3," (1975), p. 36, which is the DT's source.

It may not be surprising that the patricidal stanzas seem to have been added (probably postbellum) in West Virginia, a politically divided "Border State" made up of Virginia counties that refused to secede.