She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain

I met this fellow at a Civil War reenactment by the Maine Regiment, and he sang a familiar tune. “I bet you recognize this song,” he said, “but not the lyrics.” He was right. Then he said, “these popular folk songs were widely known and sung in the camps for troop morale, but the original lyrics weren’t always written down. After the invention of the phonograph in 1877, many of these folk songs got recorded but the original lyrics had either evolved or no one could remember them exactly, so they made up new words.”