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THE BONNIE BLUE FLAG

Borrowing the melody from a catchy Irish folk tune called "The Irish Jaunting Car" (popular in the mid-1850's Victorian British Isles), the 1861 “Bonnie Blue Flag” lyrics were written by Harry McCarthy, a comedian and song-and-dance performer, who emigrated from Ireland in 1849. Calling himself the 'Arkansas Comedian', he and his wife Lottie toured throughout the south in the antebellum years, giving what they called 'personation' shows. A narrative tale, this famous early war patriotic song was sung throughout the conflict. The words tell the story of the state-by- state formation of the Confederacy in their order of secession. Published in no fewer than six editions from 1861 to 1864, the song soon became hugely popular with both southern soldiers and civilians, and was even banned by the Union commander in the publisher's home town of New Orleans. McCarthy and his wife sang it for Jefferson Davis's inauguration as President of the young Confederacy, in Montgomery, Alabama, in February of ’61. The “call and response” we talk about in the lead-in to our performance came about when we learned the story of Polk Miller, who was born & raised on an Old South plantation, where he learned to play the banjo as he grew older. In 1861, he joined the Confederate army and fought with the Richmond Howitzers. In the years after the war, he became a very successful pharmacist, but ultimately left his business to his son in order to pursue a new musical career playing banjo, performing plantation songs and spirituals, and telling stories learned in his youth as he and his 4-man African-American “Old South Quartet”, toured the country in the 1890’s. In 1909 Richmond, Virginia, making use of the new Edison Cylinder, the latest thing in sound technology, he and the Old South Quartet recorded themselves performing “The Bonnie Blue Flag”. In his introduction to their recording, Miller says that the “Hurrah-HURRAH!” call-and-response was the way the soldiers sang it during the war.