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Eighth of January

These days it seems I look at the calendar more often than any other time of the year. Well of course there is Thanksgiving, Christmas and in a few days it is New Year’s Day. I guess it becomes a short-lived habit. That may be a good kind of habit to have. Most of my habits seem to hang around a long time. No, I am not going to enumerate them here. To long of a list. I took one last look at the calendar this week and something jumped out at me. Eighth of January. I wondered why.

I decider to take a poll. “Hey, guys, you know what the 8th of January is?” One fellow, Mr. Johnson said, “Sure, it is my great grand child’s birthday.” And I bet he was right. But that was not what I had in mind. Troy Joseph said, “That is the name of an old fiddle tune.” He was correct. I remember as a little kid hanging around the dances held in the country homes. The folks would move all the furniture from the living room into a back room; throw corn meal on the board floor and dance till the wee hours. As the night wore on, sooner or later someone would holler out, “Play ‘Eighth of January.’” That tune was what they called a breakdown. And it sure livened up the dance. Even the wallflowers joined in the “Eighth” dance.

I got to thinking about that lately. Why would anyone name a fiddle tune with a date? How about naming the piece “Cold January, or Swamp Song, or something that made a little sense. So I enticed one of the grandkids to help me Google for the answer of the burning question. Wow! Did we get the answer? The same fiddle tune is also known as “The Battle of New Orleans”. In 1959 Johnny Horton made the tune famous by recording and singing “The Battle of New Orleans.” You remember how it went…..

Well, in eighteen and fourteen we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans…..
There was to much information for me to assimilate in one sitting. I noticed Horton and Colonel Jackson went to New Orleans in December of 1814. They fought back and forth until the eighth of January, 1815. That was the day they fired their cannons till the barrels melted down, so they powdered an alligator and he lost his mind. Most importantly, however, the British retreated and hoisted the white flag. That day became a great day in the nations young history, and was celebrated for years.

Well, we don’t pay much attention to that date anymore. Too bad. Even the dances in country homes are gone. But the fiddle tune is still around, and we can remember and enjoy that.

We fired our guns and the British kept a’comin
There wasn’t nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin’
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Music and lyrics by: Jimmy Driftwood

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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