And the twinkling limbs linger longer in the dirt
And we were finishing up dinner and discussing how the rhetoric of tyranny has become freshly relevant when it suddenly occurred to me to ask ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch if he knew the origin of the line "Let tyrants shake their iron rod," because it had come into my head, and then I realized I knew the next line and the lines that followed and a tune for the entire thing and it was obviously from the eighteenth century and I still had no idea what it was:
Let tyrants shake their iron rod
And slavery clank her galling chains
We fear them not; we trust in God
New England's God forever reigns
What it turns out to be is the first verse of William Billings' "Chester," a patriotic anthem of the Revolutionary War—and nowadays, the internet tells me, the unofficial anthem of New England, which I'd always thought was something by Jonathan Richman—and I have no idea where I picked it up. High school chorus would be the obvious suspect, since we once performed a setting of Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Old Ironsides" and another of Robert Frost's "Reluctance," but I certainly don't remember anything that name-checked Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton. I know the tenor melody, not the treble harmony. I never saw HBO's John Adams (2008). Rob thinks I may have absorbed it simply by sheer osmosis of New England. I have no idea what to do about that except go make another corn pudding. In other musical news, "Married to a Mermaid" turns out to be a solid century older than I had always assumed from its association with music-hall and I am delighted. That one I did learn in high school, for Madrigals. Go know.
spatch if he knew the origin of the line "Let tyrants shake their iron rod," because it had come into my head, and then I realized I knew the next line and the lines that followed and a tune for the entire thing and it was obviously from the eighteenth century and I still had no idea what it was:Let tyrants shake their iron rod
And slavery clank her galling chains
We fear them not; we trust in God
New England's God forever reigns
What it turns out to be is the first verse of William Billings' "Chester," a patriotic anthem of the Revolutionary War—and nowadays, the internet tells me, the unofficial anthem of New England, which I'd always thought was something by Jonathan Richman—and I have no idea where I picked it up. High school chorus would be the obvious suspect, since we once performed a setting of Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Old Ironsides" and another of Robert Frost's "Reluctance," but I certainly don't remember anything that name-checked Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton. I know the tenor melody, not the treble harmony. I never saw HBO's John Adams (2008). Rob thinks I may have absorbed it simply by sheer osmosis of New England. I have no idea what to do about that except go make another corn pudding. In other musical news, "Married to a Mermaid" turns out to be a solid century older than I had always assumed from its association with music-hall and I am delighted. That one I did learn in high school, for Madrigals. Go know.
Re: “Rifle guns”
I don't know what you don't know, so I'll explain that this phrase is not from the Department of Redundancy Department, but is specific. The British military arm, the “Brown Bess,” was a smoothbore musket, effectively a black-powder shotgun firing solid deer-slug loads. Accuracy was not a consideration - like the WWII M3 submachine gun, throwing lead was the priority, and a line abreast volley-firing was certainly going to hit anything in front of them by the law of averages!
But a lone hunter needed to do better with his single shot, so the Hawken musket and others were rifled, and used daily, and so their users were crack marksmen who could hit anything they aimed at - the Robin Hoods of the day. This was the origin of the idea still held firmly in the Confederate States, that such native marksmen could still defeat the Red - er, the Bluecoats. They weren't wrong, but it was no longer enough to win a war.
(And the mores of the day made literally unthinkable the idea of deliberately murdering individuals, else Confederate sharpshooters could have gone into Washington DC and assassinated all their problems in one day, from Lincoln on down through his Cabinet and War Department. That would have broken Hell loose in every government in Christendom.)
Re: “Rifle guns”
I do know about rifling, but I don't mind you making sure.
and a line abreast volley-firing was certainly going to hit anything in front of them by the law of averages!
I am reminded of some writers I have read on medieval warfare who point out that while we are primed by stage and screen combat to think of swordsmanship in terms of fencing and dueling, you will get a much better idea of the average experience of battle if you remember that a longsword etc. is basically a steel bar with an edge on: it's more than lagniappe that it can cut you, but it could be blunt as a pipe and still wreck you when slammed into flesh and bone at speed.
And the mores of the day made literally unthinkable the idea of deliberately murdering individuals, else Confederate sharpshooters could have gone into Washington DC and assassinated all their problems in one day, from Lincoln on down through his Cabinet and War Department.
Seriously, an assassination of Lincoln in office was never considered? The Baltimore Plot was credible enough on his way there.
Re: “Other than that, Mrs Lincoln…”
“… what did you think of the play?”
Well, y’ know, it’s funny you mention that: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
Bellisario’s Maxim: Don’t examine this too closely.
There was an interesting film made some years ago, about a high school kid who applied to various colleges - including, unbeknownst to his comfortable suburban parents, the USAF Academy, who automatically did a background check - and something went clunk. His parents, it turned out, were deep-cover Soviet “moles” who had got away with it all these years because they seemed so normal that no one had ever thought or bothered to really check their backgrounds - until now…
Dallas, 1963: A lone deranged gunman kills the POTUS. Problem is, that pat explanation stinks so bad that people seriously doubt it, then and now. Nonetheless, that’s the official story.
Washington DC, 1865: A lone deranged gunman kills the POTUS. “Sic semper tyrannis, y’ all!” But there are loose ends…
Aware now of the concept of conspiracy to assassinate, in the 1970s a group of researchers defied Bellisario and examined the archives with new eyes - and things went clunk.
The Lincoln Conspiracy (1978) lays out their findings, which as so often happens are maddeningly inconclusive - yet evidence there is, that a cabal of Union Army brass and several Congressmen, furious at Lincoln’s forgiving attitude to the rebel States, found themselves a “useful fool” to carry out a shocking deliberate murder - of the President of the United States! - with the promise of gold and getaway… but dead men tell no tales…
Is it true? It’s plausible, and there’s evidence pointing to it - but no deathbed confessions, so without time travel we’ll never know.
“You wanna believe, believe. No believe? No believe.”
n b If I recall correctly, at that time the only previous attempt on a US President's life was a bizarre humiliating failure - one pistol after another refused to fire, until an incensed Andrew Jackson finally laid into the would-be assassin with his "Penang lawyer" brass-knobbed walking stick, beating the guy so badly that aides had to restrain Jackson! "Old Hickory" was not a man to be trifled with.