"Oh, that fascinating Bow Bells' glide,
It's a captivating Bow Bells' slide.
There's a rumor that the puma does it now,
Monkeys have taken to it,
Leopards and lions do it.
All the elephants wear dancing shoes,
They keep hopping with the kangaroos;
Hear them chatter, it's a matter for some talk;
Now the Jungle's got the Bow Bells' walk."
The second class of song is the Love Song, of a more or less serious
character. The Tommies came out of England singing "Tipperary," but
they dropped it in France, and the only one on whose lips I have heard
it was a little French boy sitting on the tail of a cart. The chorus
alone gave it popularity for it was the expression, ready to hand, of a
long farewell; and with its "long long way to go" showed that, like
Kitchener, the soldiers were not deceived by hopes of an early peace.
Now another song with verses more expressive of their sentiments has
taken its place. The chorus runs:
"There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And a white moon beams;
There's a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true;
Till the day when I'll be going down
That long, long trail with you."
Then the mood changes, and we hear the lads piping out,
"Taffy's got his Jennie in Glamorgan,
Sandy's got his Maggie in Dundee,
While Michael O'Leary thinks of his dearie
Far across the Irish Sea.
Billy's got his Lily up in London,
So the boys march on with smiles;
For every Tommy's got a girl somewhere
In the dear old British Isles."
Again the mood veers round, and we hear,
"Every little while I feel so lonely,
Every little while I feel so blue,
I'm always dreaming, I'm always scheming,
Because I want you, and only you.
Every little while my heart is aching,
Every little while I miss your smile,
And all the time I seem to miss you;
I want to, want to kiss you,
Every, every, every little while."
Here is part of a song I have heard sung, many and many a time, by young
officers and men whose voices are now silent in death:
"If you were the only girl in the world,
And I were the only boy,
Nothing else would matter in the world to-day,
We could go on loving in the same old way;
A Garden of Eden just made for two,
With nothing to mar our joy;
I would say such wonderful things to you,
There would be such wonderful things to do,
If you were the only girl in the world,
And I were the only boy."
Sometimes the imagination will wander into the days that are to be--for
some--and they sing,
"We don't want a lot of flags flying,
We don't want your big brass bands;
We don't want a lot of speechifying,
And we don't want a lot of waving hands;
We don't want a lot of interfering,
When we've safely crossed the foam;
But we _do_ want to find the girls we left behind,
When we all come marching home."
Will the girls remember! The words are not without tragedy. How deeply
some of the men love may perhaps never be realized by those at home.
The longing of their hearts is, at times, almost unbearable. A captain,
past middle life, took my arm one day and led me aside. He was, he
said, a little anxious about himself, for he was getting into the habit
of taking more drink than he was wont to take. He had been taking it
when he felt lonely and depressed to ease the longing of his heart.
"I never touch it at home," he said, "the society of my dear little wife
is all the stimulant I need. I would give the world to be with her
now--just to sit in my chair and watch her at her sewing or knitting.
The separation is too much for me and, you know, it has lasted nearly
three years now."
I have caught this yearning in more than one of the songs our soldiers
sing, but especially in the following, which is called "Absent":
"Sometimes, between long shadows on the grass,
The little truant waves of sunlight pass;
My eyes grow dim with tenderness, the while
Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile.
"And sometimes in the twilight gloom, apart,
The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart;
From my fond lips the eager answers fall,
Thinking I hear thee, thinking I hear thee call."
The men's thoughts pass easily from the sweetheart to the mother who
bore them, and we have a third class, the Home Song. I have been
awakened in the night by men, going up to the line, singing "Keep the
Home Fires Burning." It is very thrilling to hear in the dead of night,
when every singer is within range of the enemy's guns.
Another great favorite is,
"They built a little garden for the rose,
And they called it Dixie-land;
They built a summer breeze to keep the snows
Far away from Dixie-land;
They built the finest place I've known,
When they built my home sweet home;
Nothing was forgotten in the land of cotton,
From the clover to the honey-comb,
And then they took an angel from the skies
And they gave her heart to me.
She had a bit of heaven in her eyes
Just as blue as blue can be;
They put some fine spring chickens in the land,
And taught my Mammy how to use a frying pan.
They made it twice as nice as paradise,
And they called it Dixie-land."
Being Londoners, the following song called "Leave" never fails in its
appeal to our Division:
"I'm so delighted, I'm so excited,
With my folks I'm going to be united.
The train's departing, 'twill soon be starting;
I'll see my mother, my dad and my baby brother.
My! How I'll meet them, My! how I'll greet them.
What a happy happy day.
Just see that bustle, I'd better hustle,
Good-bye--so long--can't stay--