Hello Bob,

I think you'll find that with most events that had songs abbout them, like The Erie Canal the songs sung in the early days and months had little to do with the event it self. i.e: Most songs sung by cowboys on cattle drives had little to do with cowboys for quite some time. Finally some drover got tired of singing a song about a solfier with VD and changed the words to a Ranger who was gun shot. And we now have "Streets of Laredo" rather than " Bang the Drum Slowly" or "The Royal Albion" It was only after a while that soldier-poets began to put words to current tunes to create a body of work that other soldiers could relate to.

I would look in the works of A.B. Paterson and Robert Service first. A search from there should dig up some good lyrics.