Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Farewell to the Mountains (Davy Crock
From:
Dave'sWife
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 04:33 PM
In case Guest doesn't choose to follow those links, which He/She should anyway..since there's lots of good stuff there:
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Subject: Lyr Add: CROCKETT'S FAREWELL (David Crockett)
From: Dicho - PM
Date: 22 Apr 02 - 02:05 PM
Lyr. Add.: CROCKETT'S FAREWELL
Farewell to the mountains whose mazes to me
Were more beautiful far than Eden could be;
No fruit was forbidden, but Nature has spread
Her bountiful board, and her children were fed.
The hills were our garners- our herds wildly grew
And nature was shepherd and husbandman too
I felt like a monarch, yet thought like a man,
As I thanked the great Giver, and worshipped his plan.
The home I forsake when my offspring arose;
The graves I forsake where my children repose.
The home I redeemed from the savage and wild;
The home I have loved as a father his child;
The corn that I planted, the fields that I cleared,
The flocks that I raised and the cabin I reared;
The wife of my bosom-- Farewell to ye all!
In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall.
Farewell to my country! I fought for thee well,
When the savage rushed forth like the demons from hell.
In peace or in war I have stood by thy side--
My country, for thee I have lived, would have died!
But I am cast off, my career now is run,
And I wander abroad like the prodigal son--
Where the wild savage roves, and the broad prairies spread,
The fallen-- despised-- will again go ahead.
Penned by David Crockett, and edited by "Pegleg" Longfellow, "it will serve to express my feelings on leaving my home, my neighbors, and friends and country, for a strange land, as fully as I could in plain prose." Colonel Crockett's political defeat from Congress and vilification on the part of his opponents was too much for him. The land to which he traveled was to become the Republic of Texas.
Lines 1-2 of verse 1, lines 3-4, 7-8 of verse 2, have been set to music; these were heard at the time of that fictional epic, Davy Crockett and its insipid "Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the wild frontier." He hated being called Davy.
From John S. C. Abbott, "David Crockett: His Life and Adventures,", Chap. 11. On the Univ. Virginia Library website, Crockett
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Now let us NOT start to argue over whether or not Crockett died in the battle of the Alamo or was killed shortly thereafter in cold blood. That will NEVER be settled.
He was a remarkably articulate man, in his own vernacular, for someone who was considered an illiterate. Of course, Longfellow must have fixed it up a bit here and there.
If you read his surviving letters and other writings, you'll discover just what a natural talent for expression he had. His commentary about having to eat potatoes drenched in the human fat of indians that had been burned alive on top of the root cellar...when he was with on a military campaign is horrifying. He skirts around the issue of cannabilism but addresses it in his own way. His comments about the death of his first wife are also quite eloquent. His hopes for Texas as expressed in letters to his children are merely sad when you consider what was to follow.
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