If we could go back to the ten years before the Revolution, we would find the beginnings of the "battle of ballads", which was a war of words which would be waged over the next few years between the Patriots and the Tories. Long before the actual shots were fired, the revolt was being carried out with words and music; music which was old, familiar, and British, and words which were new, fire filled, and definitely American.  Since the ballad is a song that tells a story, it was a natural medium for Patriot  lyricists.  One of the first examples was entitled, "Liberty Song", and has the honored place in history of being our first patriotic song.  To the British ancestral tune, "Hearts of Oak", in 1768,   were set the words which John Dickenson wrote especially for the Sons of Liberty.  Dickenson was neither poet nor musician, but a lawyer who drafted the Declaration of Rights and Grievances at the Stamp Act Congress, and who later helped to frame the United States Constitution.  As the song began to catch on, the Tory opposition countered with its own verses, which were inevitably answered by new, and even more fiery stanzas from the Patriots. The original seven verses eventually swelled to two or three dozen, which accounts for the fact that there are nearly as many combinations of stanzas as there have been music historians who have researched the song.
 
 
 

         Let's move ahead a few years.  Time had brought the war of words to a war in fact. The American army was a rag-tag collection of un-uniformed farmers and tradesmen who were looked down upon and made fun of by the well dressed British troops.  The song, Yankee Doodle, was first sung by the British to make fun of the American "Doodles" (a slang expression for someone who was slow-witted) who placed chicken feathers in their hats to try to achieve some uniformity of appearance. The tables were turned, however, for when the British surrendered at Yorktown, the American fife and drum corps played Yankee Doodle as the British laid down their arms.
    Dr. Schuckburg, a British army surgeon, began the song, and it has been added to by others until there are approximately 127 known verses, of which these three are the most familiar.
 
 
 

Chorus:  Yankee Doodle, keep it up,                Yankee Doodle dandy,                Mind the music and the step,                And with the girls be handy. 2.   Father and I went down to camp along with captain Goodin'       And there we saw the men and boys as thick as hasty puddin'!         (chorus) 3.   There was Captain Washington upon a slapping stallion,      A-giving orders to his men, I guess there were a million! (chorus)

 
 
 

     As in all wars, there is another side besides that of the military man.  The haunting ballad, Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier expresses a young girl's grief at seeing her young man go off to war without the proper weapons.  Her willingness to sell her own possessions to help provide for the needs of the fighting men was typical of the Patriots, and this is reflected in the words of the song.  The tune is the old Irish "Shule Aroon", to which later generations have put several different sets of words.
 
 

Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier     There I sat on Buttermilk hill, Who could blame me, cry my fill, And every tear would turn a mill, Johnny has gone for a soldier. Me, oh, my, I loved him so, Broke my heart to see him go, And only time will heal my woe, Johnny has gone for a soldier. Oh, I  will sell my flax, I'll sell my wheel, Buy my love a sword of steel, That it in battle he may wield, Johnny has gone for a soldier.    
 

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