LET'S BE CONTENT:

"The World Turned Upside Down": A Yorktown March, or Music to Surrender By. (Arthur Schrader, Summer 1998, American Music)

The Parson Weems stories about George Washington's childhood have long been ridiculed out of our country's school books by historians in search of a more realistic, if less romantic, American past. The cherry tree and the hatchet are now part of a never-never land to be dismissed by young people as well as adults (except for advertisers of "Washington's Birthday Week Auto Sales").

There is another "Weemish" story, about music in the revolutionary era, first published in 1828, which nineteenth-century historians largely ignored, but which twentieth-century novelists, folk-song enthusiasts, and a good many professional historians have largely embraced to add an ironically dramatic fillip to their accounts of the British surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. Now, thanks to many serious as well as "pop" histories and novels, the story is one of the best known bits of trivia concerning the Revolution. Briefly, the story as usually told is that when the British surrendered at Yorktown, their "band" or "bands" played a march named "The World Turned Upside Down" (hereafter sometimes WTUD). A curious mistake in one standard American history has the Americans, instead of the British, playing WTUD at Yorktown. Oddly enough, this typographical error fits the historical event rather better than the usual form of the story. If anyone was to have played WTUD at Yorktown it ought to have been the Americans.

This WTUD story is trivial, really, no more than a "sound bite." On the other hand, WTUD is the only music that professional historians have ever asked me about when they learned of my concern with music in early American history. It may well be that WTUD is the only tune name (other than "Yankee Doodle") that professional historians associate with the American Revolution. Simon Schama, a distinguished American historian of the French Revolution, recently described "The World Turned Upside Down" as "the popular anthem of the American Revolution."

This suggests that the trivial idea of WTUD as a tune played ironically at Yorktown has transcended its triviality to become a music catch-all for some historians. In fact so many historians have repeated this story that it has thereby become a proper subject for the following account. But did it happen? We don't know. If it did happen what was the tune? We don't know. If it did happen what did it mean to the British? We don't know.

You know, some legends are just so true to the temper of their times that it's hard to care whether they are "true" or not. Ant the image of the surrendering Brits playing the following is perfect:

The World Turned Upside Down
To the Tune of, When the King enioys his own again.

Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:
Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.
Holy-dayes are despis'd, new fashions are devis'd.
Old Christmas is kickt out of Town.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.

The wise men did rejoyce to see our Savior Christs Nativity:
The Angels did good tidings bring, the Sheepheards did rejoyce and sing.
Let all honest men, take example by them.
Why should we from good Laws be bound?
Yet let's be content, &c.

Command is given, we must obey, and quite forget old Christmas day:
Kill a thousand men, or a Town regain, we will give thanks and praise amain.
The wine pot shall clinke, we will feast and drinke.
And then strange motions will abound.
Yet let's be content, &c.

Our Lords and Knights, and Gentry too, doe mean old fashions to forgoe:
They set a porter at the gate, that none must enter in thereat.
They count it a sin, when poor people come in.
Hospitality it selfe is drown'd.
Yet let's be content, &c.

The serving men doe sit and whine, and thinke it long ere dinner time:
The Butler's still out of the way, or else my Lady keeps the key,
The poor old cook, in the larder doth look,
Where is no goodnesse to be found,
Yet let's be content, &c.

To conclude, I'le tell you news that's right, Christmas was kil'd at Naseby fight:
Charity was slain at that same time, Jack Tell troth too, a friend of mine,
Likewise then did die, rost beef and shred pie,
Pig, Goose and Capon no quarter found.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 27, 2002 8:44 AM