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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: Dave Hanson Date: 25 May 11 - 02:26 AM Adam McNaughtons song properly titled ' Oor Hamlet ' is set to the tune ' The Masons Apron ' Dave H |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: GUEST,Howard Jones Date: 25 May 11 - 03:48 AM The Fiddlers Companion has extensive information: http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/SO_SOR.htm The tune seems to be found everywhere, but where it actually originated still appears to be obscure. That's folk music for you. However it's probably European rather than American. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: Tattie Bogle Date: 26 May 11 - 01:11 PM DH, Agreed re Hamlet, but I was talking about Adam's Macbeth (ooh, now you've made me say it! - bad luck for ever mair) which IS to the tune of Soldier's Joy. Ad he does King Lear to another tune (can't remember as I've only heard it once), and Romeo and Juliet to the tune of The Atholl Highlanders. And his name is McNaughtan (with 2 As) - I got it wrong too, with Mac instead of Mc! |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: GUEST,Dennis W Date: 11 Dec 11 - 10:38 AM The tune is older than it's present song presentation. We have several posters here who have found Scottish and English forms of the tune with other names. How it got the name "Soldiers Joy" might tell us a lot about the tune's history. But for this concern about the reference to morphine I have a few comments. I doubt lyrics that refer to morphine date much earlier than the 1890's as that is when morphine was synthesized from opium. In the early 1800s men would drink laudanum which was a mixture of alcohol and tincture of opium. Apparently Edgar Allen Poe was addicted to this drink and he lived in the 1830s. It is possible tincture of opium was used as a pain reliever during the Civil War with and combined with alcohol. The term morphenine refers to it's synthetic form, so I believe these lyrics making this reference cannot go back as far as the Civil War. Morphine was used extensively in World War I and some of these lyrics might go back this far. My personal belief, not substaniated by much fact, is these lyrics about morphine were popularized and might even have been written by musicians of the 1970's. The so-called Hippy influence on old time music. I am curious as I know the Cabell ancestral home in Nelson County Virginia is named "Soldiers Joy". It was built about 1785 by a revolutionary war veteran. I also have a copy of the tune printed at about the same time. Perhaps the song then was about joy in returning home after the rigors of war. In that version it might be about the joys of hearth and home and it's dance qualities adaptable to these themes. Anyone here run into a connection between these events? |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: GUEST,Paul Slade Date: 24 Mar 12 - 12:34 PM The excellent Guy Clark has a song called "Soldier's Joy, 1864" on his 2002 album The Dark, crediting its composition to himself & Shawn Camp. The lyrics describe a US Civil War soldier needing something to kill the pain of having his wounded leg amputated in a field hospital and then becoming an addict. Key lines include: "He handed me a bottle, said 'Son drink deep as you can', He turned away then he turned right back with a hacksaw in his hand.' And later: "Gimme some of that Soldier's Joy, you know what I crave, I'll be hittin' that Soldier's Joy till I'm in my grave." It's pretty clear from the context that he's talking about a solution of morphine. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: Jack Campin Date: 24 Mar 12 - 05:55 PM Yeah, but - nobody in 1864 would have assumed morphine was addictive, since it hadn't been widely used by then. (First isolated in 1817, but its first large-scale use was in the American Civil War). |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: mg Date: 24 Mar 12 - 06:37 PM I have heard it played by a Finnish group. mg |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: Tattie Bogle Date: 26 Mar 12 - 09:28 PM 12 years on....here's a link to some pals of mine doing the Robert Burns version in his "Jolly Beggars" cantata. (Worth watching the rest too!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxidXcDC8BY |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: GUEST,Paul Slade Date: 27 Mar 12 - 03:45 PM "Yeah, but - nobody in 1864 would have assumed morphine was addictive, since it hadn't been widely used by then. (First isolated in 1817, but its first large-scale use was in the American Civil War)." According to Wikipedia, morphine was first isolated in 1804, first distributed in 1817, first commercially sold in 1827, and expanded sharply in use after the invention of the hypodermic needle in 1857. American attempts to legally restrict the drug didn't start till 1875, with San Francisco's first (rather timid) anti-opium laws, but it seems reasonable to assume users would have begun to notice its addictive properties long before then. By 1864, when the US Civil War had just one year to run, perhaps the common soldiers had seen enough of their wounded colleagues fall victim to the stuff to gossip among themselves that it seemed to be addictive. That said, I dare say there was a bit of creative hindsight in Clark's lyrics too. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: GUEST,Gern Date: 27 Mar 12 - 07:54 PM The recipe for morphine and beer is repeated by Riley Puckett in Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers' version of soldier's joy. Sounds like "soldier's joy' was a euphemism for stupefication, which could indeed be blissful if one were a soldier. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: GUEST,Lighter Date: 27 Mar 12 - 08:29 PM Well, since Robert Burns knew the name of the tune in th 1780s, I'd say that morphine had nothing to do with it. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: Mark Ross Date: 27 Mar 12 - 09:29 PM I always heard that Soldier's Joy was payday. Mark Ross |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: open mike Date: 28 Mar 12 - 12:19 PM that web site seems to no longer be available...www.erols.com/olsonw which brings me to think about making arrangements for web sites to continue after one's death...esp.ones that contain a wealth of information.... and i had the idea that a soldier's joy would be relief from pain... |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: Snuffy Date: 28 Mar 12 - 04:00 PM Open Mike There is a copy of Bruce Olson's website (www.erols.com/olsonw) here at Mudcat. At the top of each page is a Quick Links box, with a drop down menu. Bruce Olson's Website is about 15th or so on that list. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: GUEST,Truman Date: 17 Jan 13 - 12:40 PM I played the tune in a bar in Rochester and a young man came up and asked what the name of it was. He said he was a music scholar and had just read the tune in a 13th century manuscript. Near Portland Oregon I watched some excellent Estonian folk dancers with a wide traditional repertoire. When they did a dance using Soldiers Joy on fiddle I ran around back and asked them about the tune. They said, "oh, we call that one 'der Engelsk ton' - the English tune." |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: GUEST,Lighter Date: 17 Jan 13 - 01:42 PM Another reason (as if one were needed) to doubt that "Soldier's Joy" meant "morphine" is that in the nineteenth century morphine was associated primarily with the relief of pain, not with getting high for the hell of it - an idea sensationalized by the press in the 1920s. Soldiers and surgeons who saw that morphine was highly addictive would hardly have considered that to be a "joy." After a while, addicts need the drug just to feel normal. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: Jack Campin Date: 17 Jan 13 - 01:46 PM He said he was a music scholar and had just read the tune in a 13th century manuscript. Did he also have the Holy Grail behind the bar instead of his own pewter mug? |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: greg stephens Date: 17 Jan 13 - 02:34 PM If that guy in the bar who saw the tune in a 13th century manuscript offers to sell you the details of a roulette system, or a gold brick, I shouldn't take him up on it. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: JohnInKansas Date: 18 Jan 13 - 08:03 AM The association of Soldier's Joy with opiates is offered in several texts that I've seen, but morphine is a fairly "modern" opium derivative that, so far as seen, wasn't much used until early 20th century. The more common opiate to which the time of the song's apparent origins overlaps would likely have been called laudanum. Paracelsus, born Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541) in Salzburg, Austria, a 16th-century Swiss-German alchemist, discovered that the alkaloids in opium are far more soluble in alcohol than water. Having experimented with various opium concoctions, Paracelsus came across a specific tincture of opium that was of considerable use in reducing pain. He called this preparation laudanum, derived from the Latin verb laudare, to praise.[2] Initially, the term "laudanum" referred to any combination of opium and alcohol. Laudanum was widely available during just about any recent war, and was a main ingredient in many of the "snake oil" patent medicines touted in the late 19th century (US Civil War time), and would have been well known and probably widely used. It's refered to frequently in "cowboy movies" - mostly set shortly after that war - when the old frontier doc treats almost anything. If the song does refer to an opiate, it most likely would have been called laudanum, although the precise formulation would be no more specifically known than for most modern herbalist concoctions. Although morphine was known ca. 1804(?), no widespread use was made of it until the invention of the hypodermic needle ca. 1857. It may have been used enough in the Civil War to cause the association to have attached then, but it's unlikely that the opiate association, if it existed earlier, meant morphine. But back to the song now. John |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: Jack Campin Date: 18 Jan 13 - 09:07 AM This includes a fair bit of reliable information about morphine use during the Civil War: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/soldis.htm The hypodermic had been invented by then, but wasn't used much till near the end of the war. The cheapest and easiest way to administer morphine was to rub the powder into an open wound. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: GUEST,Big Roly Date: 22 Feb 21 - 04:07 PM I wish someone would amend the Wikipedia entry, which gives the false impression that Soldier's Joy is almost exclusively an American tune, ignoring its importance to the vernacular culture of Britain and Ireland, even Scandinavia and France. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: cnd Date: 23 Feb 21 - 10:12 AM Roly -- you can always be the change you want to the world! But, I really don't get the same impression you got from it. At all. Here's the current intro, last edited January 29th: "Soldier's Joy" is a fiddle tune, classified as a reel or country dance.[1] It is popular in the American fiddle canon, in which it is touted as "an American classic"[1] but traces its origin to Scottish fiddling traditions.[2] It has been played in Scotland for over 200 years.What part of that gives the impression it's solely American? |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Soldier's Joy From: meself Date: 23 Feb 21 - 12:31 PM It gives the impression, rather, that its place in "the American fiddle canon" is of particular interest ... for some reason. |
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