Fiddler's Green
Fiddler's Green is a legendary imagined afterlife, where there is perpetual mirth, a fiddle that never stops playing, and dancers who never tire. Its origins are obscure, although some point to the Greek myth of the "Elysian Fields" as a potential inspiration.
Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea: Fiddler's Green, a sailor's paradise, where public houses, dance halls, and other similar amusements are plentiful and the ladies are accommodating. It really had only a celestial and not a terrestrial connotation in the sailor's mind, a sort of permanent sensual Elysium or sailor's heaven but still vaguely related to the delights enjoyed by sailors ashore. A sailor who had died, and was known to have enjoyed such pleasures in his life, was often said to have gone aloft to Fiddler's Green.
Sailors
One sailors tale published in 1832 speaks of Fiddler's Green as being "nine miles beyond the dweling of his Satanic majesty".[1] In maritime folklore its a kind of afterlife for sailors[2], where there is rum and tobacco.[3]
Frederick Marryat
Fiddler's Green appears in his novel The Dog Fiend; Or, Snarleyyow, published in 1856[4], as lyrics to a sailors' song:
At Fiddler’s Green, where seamen true
When here they’ve done their duty
The bowl of grog shall still renew
And pledge to love and beauty.
Adoption among US military
The story of Fiddler's Green was published in 1923, in Cavalry Journal.[5] According to this article, it was inspired by a story told by Captain "Sammy" Pearson at a campfire in the Medicine Bow Mountains of Wyoming. It is still used by modern cavalry units to memorialize the deceased. The name has had other military uses. Today, in the heart of the Helmand River Valley, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, the U.S. Marine Corps operates a firebase (FB) named Fiddler's Green. Fiddler’s Green was an artillery Fire Support Base in Military Region III in Vietnam in 1972 occupied principally by elements of 2nd Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry, and also was the name of the U.S. Navy's enlisted men's club in Sasebo, Japan from 1952 to 1976. The informal bar at the Fort Sill Officers' Open Mess used to be known as Fiddler's Green and it is the name of the stable and pasture used by Parsons Mounted Cavalry, a cadet group at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, and that of the bar at the Leaders Club in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Conolly's song
A song based on Fiddler's Green, called Fiddler's Green or more often Fo'c'sle Song, was written and copyrighted by John Conolly, a Lincolnshire (English) songwriter, and is sung worldwide in nautical and Irish traditional circles, often being mistakenly thought a traditional song. [6]
The cavalrymen's poem
Halfway down the trail to Hell,
In a shady meadow green
Are the Souls of all dead troopers camped,
Near a good old-time canteen.
And this eternal resting place
Is known as Fiddlers' Green.
Marching past, straight through to Hell
The Infantry are seen.
Accompanied by the Engineers,
Artillery and Marines,
For none but the shades of Cavalrymen
Dismount at Fiddlers' Green.
Though some go curving down the trail
To seek a warmer scene.
No trooper ever gets to Hell
Ere he's emptied his canteen.
And so rides back to drink again
With friends at Fiddlers' Green.
And so when man and horse go down
Beneath a saber keen,
Or in a roaring charge of fierce melee
You stop a bullet clean,
And the hostiles come to get your scalp,
Just empty your canteen,
And put your pistol to your head
And go to Fiddlers' Green.
Other songs
- Fiddler's Green appears as a destination in Archie Fisher's Final Trawl and in
Hans Zimmer's Hoist the colors from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.[7]
- Fiddler's Green is an epic song by the Canadian rock group The Tragically Hip.
See also
References
- ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=V31PAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA95&dq=Fiddler's+Green&hl=en&ei=xBseTPX1M4mIOL3b8aQM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=Fiddler's%20Green&f=false
- ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=R4s9AAAAYAAJ&pg=RA2-PA168&dq=Fiddler's+Green&hl=en&ei=xBseTPX1M4mIOL3b8aQM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q=Fiddler's%20Green&f=false
- ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NI4VAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA133&dq=Fiddler's+Green&hl=en&ei=6B8eTMTwBtSiONzfuI8M&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAzgU#v=onepage&q&f=false
- ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ULABAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+dog+fiend%3B+or,+Snarleyyow&source=bl&ots=mdqO22cLF4&sig=Y3iMTL7DLMZfM5lOjVj7RVWEMlc&hl=en&ei=LRseTKGPO4T-0gTQ1fmkDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
- ^ "Fiddler's Green and other Cavalry Songs by JHS". Cavalry Journal. 1923.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Blood, Peter; Patterson, Annie, eds. (1988). Rise Up Singing. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Sing Out!. p. 201. ISBN 1881322122.
O Fiddler's Green is a place I've heard tell, where fishermen go if they don't go to hell
- ^ http://www.metrolyrics.com/hoist-the-colours-lyrics-hans-zimmer.html#ixzz0bZNpUsDD
- Page, Michael (1985). Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were. Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-81607-8.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Fiddlers green - World Wide Words