Amy Stewart’s book
The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms begins with a chapter on Charles Darwin's studies of worms. Darwin wrote
The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits in 1881. Apparently, "vegetable mould" was the term for soil at that time.
Thank heaven, Darwin, and Ms. Stewart for that missing link of information! Growing up where Mulder Drive met Eastridge Drive in the early Sixties, life was simple if mysterious, and school was delightful. "Writing" meant printing in pencil on wide-lined newsprint. "Music" didn't require carrying a tune when we
sang "the worms play pinochle on your snout. " We learned to read with Dick and Jane, and spent our fifteen-minute recesses climbing on the jungle gym and chanting, "I see London, I see France, I see someone's underpants." It was okay to get dirty if we were wearing our Play Clothes, but not in our School Clothes. At the pool we got our faces wet and blew bubbles.
On some level, we little kids knew that when we crossed into third grade life was going to get much tougher. We would have to learn the elementary backstroke and the breaststroke. We would start reading Childhood of Famous Americans biographies, and have to "carry" in addition. We would try to get pigs in the pigpen playing
jacks with a golf ball on the concrete slap at recess. It wouldn't be a picnic, that was for sure!
Still, for fear factor, the worst was knowing we would be in Mrs. M and Mrs. S's Sunday School class. These two pillars of the church had been teaching third grade Sunday School since before Eve bit the apple. They ran the class like a miniature kiddie church service. The kids sat on wooden benches on either side of an aisle, and opened kiddie hymnals to sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" each Sunday. The goal must have been to prepare eight year olds how to behave in an actual church service.
If we didn't actually sing the verses of "
John Brown's Body" as part of "The Battle Hymn," we must have acquired that knowledge at the same age:
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His soul goes marching on.
He's gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
He's gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
His soul goes marching on.
We also sang a dreadful parody with "teacher hit me with a ruler" that is too eerie to print in this age of school shootings.
The Online Etymology Dictionary redirects me from moulder to molder, but not to Mulder Drive:
molder (v.) "to crumble away," 1531, probably freq. of
mold (3) "loose earth."
Thanks to a
Library of Congress website for teachers I learn the John Brown song predates Julia Ward Howe's writing of the Battle Hymn:
The original version was a religious camp meeting song written in the 1850s and began "Say, brothers, will you meet us? On Canaan’s happy shore?" The song eventually spread to army posts, where its steady rhythm and catchy chorus made it a natural marching song.
Soon, though, a new version appeared that hitched the old tune to a more militant cause. When the abolitionist John Brown was executed in 1859, someone created a new, fiercer set of lyrics; the song now declared that "John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. His soul is marching on!"
By the time the Civil War began in 1861, the John Brown version of the song had spread throughout the Union army. Soldiers added new verses as they marched through the South, including one that promised to hang Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, from a tree. Meanwhile, Confederate soldiers answered back with their own version, in which John Brown was hanging from a tree.
The version that we know today came to be when an abolitionist author, Julia Ward Howe, overheard Union troops singing "John Brown’s Body" and was inspired to write a set of lyrics that dramatized the rightness of the Union cause. Within a year this new hymn was being sung by civilians in the North, Union troops on the march, and even prisoners of war held in Confederate jails.
Which brings me back to my moldy memories of third grade. That year we took a family road trip to Nebraska City to see
Arbor Lodge and John Brown's Cave. I was very leery of looking into the cave, for fear of seeing his body a-mouldering. It was disappointing to find the cave was really a tiny basement under a pioneer cabin. There were no trains to be seen either, on this stop of the Underground Railroad!
JOHN BROWN'S CAVEJohn Kagi, one of abolishionist John Brown's most trusted collegues, went to stay with his sister and brother-in-law Allen Mayhew. It was the early 1850's and the area was the Nebraska City area of Nebraska. Their cabin was very close to the Missouri River. Across the river was Iowa and Missouri. John Kagi, under the instruction of his friend John Brown, dug an underground room underneath the Mayhew cabin. It was accessible only from a ravine leading into a creek. The entrance was well camoflauged. There was also a hollow log put into the wall that lead to fresh air outside. This helped the ventilation when the entrance was closed up. This cave was to be used as a stop on the Underground Railroad. At night, slaves would cross the Missouri River from Missouri (slave state) to Nebraska (free state). They would hide out in the cave for the night. Mrs. Mayhew would bring them cornbread. After a short stay, they would be ferried across the Missouri River again. They would be taken a little more north to Iowa (free state), to another stop on the Underground Railroad. Or else, as more recent evidence shows, they would proceed toward Lincoln to hide out in Robber's Cave (see Nebraska haunted sites on Nebraska page). This cabin and cave are still standing where they were over a century ago. The Mayhew cabin is said to be the oldest standing building in Nebraska. It is open to tours and well worth the time. And now, after this morning of mental mouldering, I may need to find
Flashman and the Angel of the Lord at the library. The late George Macdonald Fraser's novel explains John Brown and the Underground Railroad better than any history class from third grade on.
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Battle Hymn of the Republic
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.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
Chorus
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on."
Chorus
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Chorus
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Chorus
While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Chorus
Our God is marching on.
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Darwin, C. R. 1881.
The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms, with observations on their habits. London: John Murray.
© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder
