From: toml@xrxedds.UUCP (Tom Love)
Subject: Re: Lorena ???
Organization: Xerox EDDS, Herndon, Va.
Distribution: rec
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 14:42:42 GMT


> 	My father happened to see a TV document about (folk etc.)
> songs from the times of the US' Civil War. He asked my if I could get
> words for this song called "Lorena". I might get it from library but
> I'll try this first - anybody know it ?

absolutely one of my favorite songs.  my wife and i joke about having
another child just so we can name her lorena.

taken from the cd "songs of the civil war" (soundtrack to the
documentary you saw), Columbia CK 48607, performed by john hartford
with jamie hartford, mark howard, and roy husky jr.  also available
on john's album and cassette "gum tree canoe", flying fish records
[great album].  i'd be very interested myself in hearing about any
other recordings of this song.

i include a bit from the liner notes here, as it makes the story
behind the song more clear and more touching:

"Here is a good example," says John Hartford, "of a song whose lyric
content didn't have anything to do with the war.  Probably one of the
reasons it was so popular, in addition to its powerful melody, was that
it carried soldiers away from the drudgery and the nightmare of war."
Hartford goes on to pass down the folk myth that one of the reasons
the South lost the war was that men got so homesick singing "Lorena,"
they didn't want to fight anymore.  Historically, the facts bear out
that Universalist Pastor Henry De Lafayette Webster's first preaching
job took him to Zanesville, Ohio, where he fell in love with Miss Ella
Blocksom.  They planned to marry, but her family convinced her to
jilt him, a sadness that stuck in his craw for nearly a decade, until
he wrote the verses to the song.  The name Ella became Bertha, but an
extra syllable was needed, so he turned to Edgar Allen Poe's "lost
Lenore" and Lorena was born.  The final touch came from a melody
supplied by Henry's friend, Joseph Philbrick Webster (no relation),
best known as the co-writer of "In The Sweet By And By."  After the
war, Southern girls were frequently named Lorena.  Hartford, who often
moonlights as a steamboat captain, traces his interest in the song to
a stern-wheeler named Lorena that ran up the Ohio River from
Zanesville to Pittsburgh.

Lorena
J.P. Webster - H. De Lafayette Webster

Oh the years creep slowly by Lorena
The snow is on the ground again
The sun's low down in the sky Lorena
The frost gleams where the flowers have been

But the heart beats on as warmly now
As when the summer days were nigh
Oh the sun can never dip so low
To be down in Affection's cloudless sky

A hundred months have passed Lorena
Since last I held that hand in mine
And felt the pulse beat fast Lorena
Though mine beat faster far than thine

A hundred months 'twas flowery May
When up that hilly slope we'd climb
To watch the dying of the day
And hear the distant church bells chime

We loved each other then, Lorena
Far more than we ever dared to tell
And what we might have been Lorena
Had our lovings prospered well

Then 'tis part the years roll on
I'll not call up their shadowy form
I'll say to them, lost years sleep on!
Sleep on, heed life's pelting storms
--
Bash to fit, file to hide, paint to cover.


Tom Love
Xerox Engineering Systems / Engineering Document Management Systems
607 Herndon Pkwy, Herndon, VA 22070  Voice 703-787-2027  Intelnet 8-440-2027

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