Brown was a fiery abolitionist from violence-torn Kansas who
led a raid on the U.S. federal armory and rifle factory at
Harpers Ferry, Virginia in October 1859. Impatient with the
pacifism of most abolitionists, he hoped to inspire a revolt
among slaves in Virginia and North Carolina, arming them with
long guns from the arsenal. The raid was briefly successful
but the insurrection did not spread far. Surrounded by local
farmers and captured two days later by federal troops under
Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee, Brown was quickly charged with
treason (the first man in America to be so), convicted, and
hanged. Republican politicians disowned his violence, but many
Americans were either inspired or alarmed by his rash action.
It contributed to the South's decision to secede from the
Union in 1860, and it hardened the North's desire to end
slavery.
Northern soldiers, fond of singing as they marched, soon came
up with a revival-style folk anthem proclaiming the
righteousness of Brown's anti-slavery crusade. Countless
variants of the folk version were sung, but most began along
the lines of:
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his truth goes marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His truth is marching on.
The abolitionist writer Julia Ward Howe, who had heard soldiers
singing the rousing anthem, composed her more poetically
ambitious
Battle Hymn in late 1861 in an effort to
supply it with better words. Her famous lyrics begin, "Mine eyes
have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; / He is trampling
out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; / He hath
loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: / His
truth is marching on."
One commonly repeated verse of the original song envisioned the
President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, swinging from a
crabapple limb: "
They will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple
tree." A queue of early Joyce annotators—Hodgart and
Worthington, Thornton, Bowen—interpreted this phrase as alluding
to a parody of the
Battle Hymn of the Republic called
We'll
Hang Jeff Davis. Thornton says cryptically that the parody
is "by Turner," and that "Though I know such a song exists, I
have not been able to find a printed copy of it." But it is
hardly necessary to suppose a crude parody of an eloquent
elaboration of a crude original, whose verses, after all, had
been endlessly varied in soldiers' mouths. The Jeff Davis line,
sung three times, appears in many surviving versions of
John
Brown's Body. The detail reproduced here comes from a
piece of sheet music titled
John Brown Song that bears
no date but does feature a colored emblem of Indiana at the top,
presumably because the lines were sung by an Indiana regiment of
federal troops.
§ Many
Irish-Americans fought for the Union in the Civil War, and after
the conclusion of that long and brutal conflict some of them
returned to the old country to join the ill-fated
Fenian revolt of the late 1860s.
John Brown's Body probably began circulating on Irish
lips at this time, repurposed as a song about liberation from a
different kind of tyranny. The song's exaltation of righteous
violence represents one way in which Irish nationalism drew
inspiration from American abolitionism, and the divisive
attitudes that Americans held toward its central figure, the
fanatical John Brown, found close parallels in Irish attitudes
toward the Fenians.
Joyce's deployment of the line about hanging the enemy's
leader from a crabapple tree suggests that this ambivalence
about violent renunciation was still very much in play in the
early 20th century. The threatened murder of Joe Chamberlain,
something that organizers of the December 1899 protest feared,
comes from the mouths of young protesters whose sympathies for
militant revolution ally them with John Brown. Bloom's
instinctive dislike of violence and grudging respect for
institutional order ("Silly billies: mob of young cubs
yelling their guts out . . . Few years' time half of
them magistrates and civil servants") allies him with
the great numbers of American abolitionists who sought
peaceful alternatives to civil butchery.
Two personal communications from Ireland suggest that the
sour apple verse of the song has long played a part in
political rallies there. Cathal Coleman observes that the
great short-story writer Frank O'Connor featured it in "The
Cornet Player Who Betrayed Ireland," and also in his memoir An
Only Child (1961), both times in the context of early
20th century musical duels in the streets of Cork between
political supporters of William O'Brien and his rival John
Redmond. O'Connor's father played the big drum in a band of
O'Brienites, and the story recalls how the son and his
companions "used to parade the street with tin cans and toy
trumpets, singing ‘We’ll hang Johnnie Redmond on a sour
apple tree.’" At a crucial moment in the story, when the
musicians in the adult band have gone off to a pub, two boys
are left to guard the instruments. They take up drums, and
Dickie Ryan starts to sing, "We’ll hang William O’Brien on
a sour apple tree." Dumbstruck, the protagonist realizes
that Dickie means it, and he begins singing, "We’ll hang
Johnnie Redmond on a sour apple tree," until an adult
"hanger-on" of the band barks at him to shut up. Outnumbered
and astonished at the betrayal from within, the boy retreats
to the pub, concealing the news of treachery from his father.
In his memoir, O'Connor recalls that the political policy of
his father's band "was 'Conciliation and Consent', whatever
that meant. The Redmond supporters we called Molly Maguires,
and I have forgotten what their policy was—if they had one.
Our national anthem was God Save Ireland and theirs A
Nation Once Again. I was often filled with pity for the
poor degraded children of the Molly Maguires, who paraded the
streets with their tin cans, singing (to the tune of John
Brown's Body), 'We'll hang William O'Brien on a Sour
Apple Tree' . . . There were frequent riots, and during
election times Father came home with a drumstick up his
sleeve—a useful weapon if he was attacked by the Molly
Maguires." Veteran readers of Ulysses will recall the
pitched battles of Circe: "Wolfe Tone against Henry
Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, Michael
Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell,
Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O'Leary against
Lear O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald
Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of
The O'Donoghue."
Vincent Altman O'Connor recalls that John Brown's truth was
still marching on in these battles as recently as the 1960s.
During the 1966 presidential contest, which the aged Éamon de
Valera narrowly won, "marching bands and singing were a
feature of the campaign." Memories of Ireland's own Civil War
were still raw and "a group of Free Staters" in Dublin North
Central sang, "We'll hang De Valera by the balls in
Stephen's Green." O'Connor was 11 impressionable years
old at the time.
