Lyr Add: How Happy the Soldier

Subject: How Happy The Soldier
From: Gerard
Date: 17 Jul 03 - 09:15 PM

QUESTION: DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT A MARNEDY IS?



Information

This tune was popular among British soldiers during the Revolutionary War. The Americans picked it up and it was popular on both sides during the War of 1812.

How happy the soldier who lives on his pay,
And spends half a crown on six pence a day;
He fears neither justices, warrants nor bums,
But pays all his debts with a roll of the drums,

Chorus
With a row de dow,
Row de dow, Row de dow,
And he pays all his debts with a roll of his drums.

He cares not a Marnedy how the world goes;
His King finds his quarters, and money and clothes;
He laughs at all sorrow whenever it comes,
And rattles away with the roll of the drums.

Chorus

The drum is his glory, his joy and delight,
It leads him to pleasure as well as to fight;
No girl, when she hears it, though ever so glum,
But packs up her tatters, and follows the drum.

Chorus

Subject: RE: How Happy The Soldier
From: masato sakurai
Date: 17 Jul 03 - 09:33 PM

HOW HAPPY THE SOLDIER is in the DT.

Two versions are found at Bodleian Broadside Ballads (where the word is "marvedy"; what is it?):

How Happy the Soldier

The Happy Soldier

Subject: RE: How Happy The Soldier
From: masato sakurai
Date: 17 Jul 03 - 09:39 PM

"He cares not a marnedy..." in the version in Dolph's Sound Off! (Cosmopolitan, 1929, p. 487).

Subject: RE: How Happy The Soldier
From: masato sakurai
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 08:22 AM

"Not a marvedie", I think, is the phrase, meaning "not a farthing." See The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:

Marvedie (A). A maravedi (q.v.), a small obsolete Spanish copper coin of less value than a farthing.

"What a trifling, foolish girl you are, Edith, to send me by express a letter crammed with nonsense about books and gowns, and to shde the only thing I cared a marvedie about into the postscript."- Sir W. Scott: Old Mortality, chap. xi.

Subject: RE: How Happy The Soldier
From: masato sakurai
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 08:32 AM

See Google Search: "not a maravedi".

Subject: RE: How Happy The Soldier
From: masato sakurai
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 08:42 AM

For images of "maravedi" coins, click here.

Subject: RE: How Happy The Soldier
From: Gerard
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 12:06 PM

Fascinating research. Thank you very much. I see now that "he cares not a marnedy (or marvedie)" is perhaps, like saying "I don't care a hoot" or other such expressions. Thank you again!

Subject: RE: How Happy The Soldier
From: GUEST,No Me
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 03:50 PM

The Song is by John O'Keeffe from his play 'The Poor Soldier", 1784.