Stories of Famous Songs, Vol 2

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STORIES OF
into the piece, and is usually sung by Blue Peter.
" How Stands the Glass Around," commonly, at one time, called General Wolfe's Song, and said to have been sung by him on the night before the battle of Quebec, is first found, as a half-sheet song with music, printed about the year 1710. It was originally known as " The Duke of Berwick's March," and " Why, Soldiers, Why ?" It is contained in a MS. book of poetry in the Advocates' Library, Edin-burgh. The tune was also discovered in a ballad opera, " The Patron," 1729. Shield in-troduced both music and words into the " Siege of Gibraltar."
Though " D'ye ken John Peel ?" is essentially a hunting song, it is so widely known that an authentic history of its hero and its origin has every claim to preservation here, especially as there are several spurious versions and spurious accounts in existence. It was written by John Woodcock Graves about the year 1820 (the words are not in the " Universal Songster," published in 1825). John Peel, the hero of the song, a famous Cumberland hunting man, died in 1854 at the age of seventy-eight. Here is Mr. Grave's own account of the circumstances under which the song was written, taken from
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