Immortal Songs of Camp and Field

Maryland, my Maryland!

Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll’s sacred trust,
Remember Howard’s warlike thrust,
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland, my Maryland!

Come! ’Tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!
With Ringgold’s spirit for the fray,
With Watson’s blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland, my Maryland!

Dear mother, burst the tyrant’s chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain,
“Sic semper!” ’tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back amain,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland, my Maryland!

Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,
Maryland!
Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,
Maryland!
Come to thine own heroic throng
Stalking with liberty along,
And chant thy dauntless slogan-song,
Maryland, my Maryland!

I see the blush upon thy cheek,
Maryland!
But thou wast ever bravely meek,
Maryland!
But lo! There surges forth a shriek,
From hill to hill, from creek to creek,
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland, my Maryland!

Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll,
Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the shot, the blade, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland, my Maryland!

I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The “Old Line’s” bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb;
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum —
She breathes, she burns! She’ll come!
She’ll come!
Maryland, my Maryland!

    – James Ryder Randall.
My Maryland, one of the most popular songs of the Confederacy, was written by James Ryder Randall, in 1861. Randall was at that time professor of English literature at Poydras College, upon the Fausse Rivière, of Louisiana. He was very young, and had but recently come from college in Maryland. He was full of poetry and romance, and when one day in April, 1861, he read in the New Orleans Delta the news of the attack on the Massachusetts Sixth as they passed through Baltimore, it fired his blood. “This account excited me greatly,” Mr. Randall writes. “I had long been absent from my native city, and the startling event there inflamed my mind. That night I could not sleep, for my nerves were all unstrung, and I could not dismiss what I had read in the paper from my mind. About midnight I arose, lit a candle, and went to my desk. Some powerful spirit appeared to possess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded to write the song of My Maryland. I remember that the idea appeared to take shape first as music in the brain – some wild air that I cannot now recall. The whole poem of nine stanzas, as originally written, was dashed off rapidly when once begun.”

As Doctor Matthews well says, there is often a feeling afloat in the minds of men, undefined and vague for want of one to give it form, and held in solution, as it were, until a chance word dropped in the ear of a poet suddenly crystallizes this feeling into song, in which all may see clearly and sharply reflected what in their own thought was shapeless and hazy. It was young Randall’s fortune to be the instrument through which the South spoke, and, by a natural reaction, his burning lines helped “fire the Southern heart.”

The form of the poem was suggested by Mangan’s Karamanian Exile, —

“I see thee ever in my dreams,
Karaman!
Thy hundred hills, thy thousand streams,
Karaman, O Karaman!
As when thy gold-bright morning gleams,
As when the deepening sunset seams
With lines of light thy hills and streams,
Karaman!
So now thou loomest on my dreams,
Karaman, O Karaman!”

The previous use of this form, which is perhaps the most effective possible for a battle hymn, by no means detracts from Randall’s stirring poem.

The poem would never have had great effect, however, if it had not been fortunate in drafting to its service a splendid piece of music. Miss Hattie Cary, of Baltimore, afterward the wife of Professor H. M. Martin, of Johns-Hopkins University, brought about the wedding which enabled Randall’s song to reach every camp-fire of the Southern armies. “The Glee Club was to hold its meeting in our parlors one evening early in June,” she writes, “and my sister Jennie, being the only musical member of the family, had charge of the program on the occasion. With a schoolgirl’s eagerness to score a success, she resolved to secure some new and ardent expression of feelings that were by this time wrought up to the point of explosion. In vain she searched through her stock of songs and airs – nothing seemed intense enough to suit her. Aroused by her tone of despair, I came to the rescue with the suggestion that she should adapt the words of Maryland, my Maryland, which had been constantly on my lips since the appearance of the lyric a few days before in the South. I produced the paper and began declaiming the verses. ‘Lauriger Horatius,’ she exclaimed, and in a flash the immortal song found a voice in the stirring air so perfectly adapted to it. That night when her contralto voice rang out the stanzas, the refrain rolled forth from every throat without pause or preparation; and the enthusiasm communicated itself with such effect to the crowd assembled beneath our windows as to endanger seriously the liberties of the party.”

This air was originally an old German student melody used for a lovely German lyric, Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, which Longfellow has numbered among his translations. The first verse is as follows, —

“O hemlock tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches!
Green not only in summer time,
But in the winter’s frost and rime!
O hemlock tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches!”

Some one has well said that the transmigration of tunes is a large and fertile subject. The capturing of the air of a jolly college song and harnessing it to the service of a fiery battle hymn may seem very strange, but not so to those who are familiar with the adventures which a tune has often undergone.

This song was not only popular through the South, but so stately and pleasing was the melody that it was often sung in the North. A soldier relates: “I remember hearing it sung under circumstances that for the time made me fancy it was the sweetest song I ever listened to. Our command had just reached Frederick City, Maryland, after a distressing forced march, and going into bivouac, the staff to which I was attached took up their quarters on the piazza of a lonely mansion, and there, wrapping themselves in their blankets, with their saddles for pillows, sought needed repose. Sleep would not come to my eyelids. The night was a delicious one; it was warm, but a slight breeze was stirring, and the sky was clear, and the stars shone brilliantly. The stillness was profound, every one around me was asleep, when suddenly there fell upon my ears the song: —