Rain fall and wet Becky Lawton.But who Becky Lawton was, and why she should or should not be wet, and whether the dryness was a reward or a penalty, none could say. I got the impression that, in either case, the event was posthumous, and that there was some tradition of grass not growing over the grave of a sinner; but even this was vague, and all else vaguer. The other song I heard but once, on a morning when a squad of men came in from picket duty, and chanted it in the most rousing way. It had been a stormy and comfortless night, and the-picket station was very exposed. It still rained in the morning when I strolled to the edge of the camp, looking out for the men, and wondering how they had stood it. Presently they came striding along the road, at a great pace, with their shining rubber blankets worn as cloaks around them, the rain streaming from these and from their equally shining faces, which were almost all upon the broad grin, as they pealed out this remarkable ditty:--
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It will be observed that, although this song is quite secular in its character, yet its author called it a “spiritual.”
I heard but two songs among them, at any time, to which they would not, perhaps, have given this generic name.
One of these consisted simply in the endless repetition — after the manner of certain college songsof the mysterious line,--
Boston: Fields, Osgood and Co. University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge. 1870.
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