TY  - CHAP
AB  - In 1862, a Confederate officer, Jo Shelby, and his men were deep in enemy territory, waiting to cross a river. While they were waiting for transportation, a member of their party, one Jake Connor, passed the time by softly singing a song. Years later, well after the war, they all remembered that moment and the words to that song. The song was called the Fallen Dragoon. Dragoon was a seventeenth century term from the English civil war for a cavalryman. The song also used another outdated English military term, vidette. A vidette was a mounted outpost who rode in advance of an army. Because the lyrics of the Fallen Dragoon are fairly significant, both for the men who were there, and for my analysis, I’d like to begin by quoting a few stanzas of this ballad:Rifleman, shoot me a fancy shotStraight at the heart of yon prowling vidette;Ring me a ball on the glittering spotThat shines on his breast like an amulet.Ah, Captain, here goes for a fine-drawn bead;There's music around when my barrel's in tune.Crack went the rifle, the messenger sped,And dead from his horse fell the ranging dragoon.Now, rifleman, steal through the bushes and snatchFrom your victim some trinket to handsel first blood –A button, a loop, or that luminous patchThat gleams in the moon like a diamond stud.Oh, Captain, I staggered and sunk on my trackAs I gazed in the face of the fallen vidette,For he looked so like you, as he lay on his back,That my heart rose upon me, and masters me yet.Yet I snatched off this trinket, this locket of gold;An inch from its center my lead broke its way,Scarce grazing the picture, so fair to behold,Of a beautiful lady in bridal array.Ha, rifleman, fling me the locket! Tis she,My brother's young bride, and the fallen dragoonWas her husband.Hush, soldier, was heaven's decree;We must bury him here by the light of the moon. Edwards, 1993
VL  - 29
SN  - 978-0-7623-1325-9, 978-1-84950-424-9/0163-2396
DO  - 10.1016/S0163-2396(06)29007-0
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-2396(06)29007-0
AU  - Bradley Richard
ED  - Norman K. Denzin
PY  - 2006
Y1  - 2006/01/01
TI  - Race, Romanticism, and the Contours of Confederate Identity
T2  - Studies in Symbolic Interaction
T3  - Studies in Symbolic Interaction
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 53
EP  - 62
Y2  - 2024/04/19
ER  -