happy? - Aug 9 (Battle of the Nile)

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 9 (Battle of the Nile)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 09:40 PM

I thought George Washing was famous for putting a hole in his mother's washtub.

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 9 (Battle of the Nile)
From: Abby Sale
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 06:57 PM

:-)

1. Hundreds of years ago, MacEdward Leach taught me that the story of George Washing and the cherry tree was a True story. It was True because Washington was an honest and courageous person. It was more True because the Folk perceived him that way. That's the image we've carried foreward. This aids to create our sense of nationhood and identity so it's important. (Yes, certain polititions may have forgotten the lessons.) The factuality was a matter for trivialists.

2. I was looking up the events surrounding International Working Women's Day, Jan 8th. Especially the origins. I found a number of historians who'd simply copied details from prior unverified publications (yeah, much like Almanacians). None had done actual primary research. That was before the Web was invented to make it so easy to be lazy, as well. The only person I found who'd eyeballed the actual material was Mr. Chase, of "Chase's Annual Events." I asked him about that. He was most contemptuous of "scholars" with big credentials who pretended to be authoritative but were merely derivative of inaccurate blather.

It made me sit up and think. In the Happy stuff, I decided to use the Folk Truths above the "facts" of historians which may not be hard & eternal, anyway. An easy choice since this is a folk forum not a history one. Thus the above gets posted on the 9th instead of the 1st. Of course, as Q gives, it could be posted both days. Both would be true. (That's also why I might post that someone was born on this day AND that one, not OR that one. He might have been born some entirely other day, after all.)

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 9 (Battle of the Nile)
From: JWB
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 04:18 PM

Abby,

Shoulda known you'd be on the spot with this one. Just on my way to post the very same stanza you did. Well done!

Jerry

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 9 (Battle of the Nile)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 02:04 PM

It was in the forenoon of the first day of August,
One thousand seveenteen hundred and ninety-eight,
After a long pursuit we o'ertook the Toulon fleet,
And soon we let them know how we came to fight.

1st verse, "The Mouth of the Nile," song sheet at the Bodley Library.
Nova Scotians not very accurate.

Subject: RE: happy? - Aug 9 (Battle of the Nile)
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 09:54 AM

"Of minor interest, historians, of whom we care little"
Them's fighting words!!

Subject: happy? - Aug 9 (Battle of the Nile)
From: Abby Sale
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 09:43 AM

Battle of the Nile - French fleet is zapped, taking out Nap's supply route to Egypt.
(Of minor interest, historians, of whom we care little, use the date 8/1/1798)

        'Twas on the ninth day of August in the year ninety-eight
          We'll sing the praise of Nelson and the bold British fleet;
          For the victory we've gained o'er the rebellious crew,
          And to the Mediterannean Sea, brave boys, we'll bid adieu.
  
                  "The Battle of the Nile," in Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia, Mackenzie

In 1829 F Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835) wrote a narrative poem based on this battle which began, "The boy stood on the burning deck / Whence all but him had fled"

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