Not feeling bloggy because I'm lost in the wilderness of the French and Indian War again.
I asked my pal Peg, who knows traditional folk music, if there are any songs from the French and Indian War. She turned up "Brave Wolfe, or the Battle of Quebec," sung here by Carolyn Hester.
I've already posted the painting "The Death of Wolfe" romanticizing James Wolfe, the English general who beat the French at the Battle of Quebec in 1759--almost the last big battle of the war.
The liner notes say: "In America, the backwoods bards paid tribute to the sweetheart he left grieving for him in the haunting ballad where she is made to say, 'Strange news is come to town, strange news is carried, some say my love is dead. . . "
Of course, when you read about these war heroes, they're usually not romantic or even likable at all, and Wolfe certainly wasn't. He waged what was essentially a terrorist war against the Canadians--not that that was unusual in this war.
Anyway, it's a good song--it survived 150 years before being written down.