Beating General Taylor's Long Dead Horse

Subject: Beating General Taylor's Long Dead Horse
From: GUEST,Nick
Date: 10 Aug 01 - 02:17 PM

This is a thread that has been flogged over in The Great Big Sea Chat room and I thought I would see If you Catters had any new input.

In the liner notes for the album "Play" by Great Big Sea it says according to Fergus Obrien the song General Taylor is about a disgraced American officer who was a turncoat in the Mexican American War. This has never made sense to me, but while investigating this it lead me to the information about St. Patricks Battallion aka Los San Patricios. Further info was gleaned from Stan Hugill's Shanties of the seven seas, where the connection to the Stormalong family of shanties is established.

There are also alternate verses that name Zachary Taylor. I am also aware of the connection to the Santiano shanties

It has been my conjecture that the version Great Big Sea does was most likley written by a member of St. Patrick's battallion and is in fact about Zachary Taylor, liner notes not withstanding.

Anybody care to beat this dead horse with me? Opinions and conjecture welcome. Nick

Subject: RE: Beating General Taylor's Long Dead Horse
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Aug 01 - 03:02 PM

Sounds like you've already got the gist of it. I had also heard that those responsible for the inaccurate verses about "Santa Anna gaining the day" were ex-British manofwarsmen working as mercenaries for the Mexicans; when they composed the verses is not clear; they were either optimistic before the final battle or sore losers afterwards.