Mimsy Were the Borogoves

Music: Are you ready for that? Driving your car down a desert highway listening to the seventies and eighties rise like zombies from the rippling sand? I hope so.

Songs of the American Revolution

Jerry Stratton, October 15, 2025

December 31, 2025: The Battle of the Kegs
Battle of the Kegs woodcut: Battle of the Kegs from A Child’s History of the United States, John Dawson Gilmary Shea.; Battle of the Kegs

The Battle of the Kegs, as depicted in John Gilmary Shea’s 1872 A Child’s History of the United States.

You may know Francis Hopkinson as one of the less-prominent signers of the Declaration of Independence. But he was much more than a Founder. He was also a poet. I’ve included his wonderful “For a Muse of Fire” in The Padgett Sunday Supper Club Sestercentennial Cookery, which will be the next post in this series. And— he wasn’t just a poet: he was also a satirical poet. This Sunday, January 5, marks the 248th anniversary of the battle that provided him his finest hour as a writer. If there’s a second thing that Hopkinson is remembered for, it is his darkly humorous account of The Battle of the Kegs in rhyme.

  1. Battle of Bennington
  2. Upside Down Yorktown
  3. Cherry Valley Massacre
  4. Battle of the Kegs ⬅︎
  5. Sestercentennial Cookery
  6. The New Colossus

Accounts differ in minor points, but sometime around January 5, 1778, David Bushnell—who had previously made the first combat submarine—released gunpowder-filled kegs onto the Delaware River near Bordentown, New Jersey. His hope was that the kegs would explode on contact with British ships patrolling the harbor.

Most sources say that the plan was performed with the knowledge and approval of General Washington. Presumably, then, there was more to the plan than “gunpowder-filled kegs randomly floating down the river”. The kegs are often described as “contact mines”. The few accounts that describe how the mines were to be ignited describe the fuse as a flintlock fuse.

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October 15, 2025: The World Turned Upside Down
World Turned Upside Down sharing image: The World Turned Upside Down sharing image, over Humphreys delivering the British standards to congress, November 1781.; Surrender at Yorktown

And of course I used the piano script from 42 Astounding Scripts to create a MIDI file and then GarageBand to make a slideshow of the Revolution.

One of the most enduring stories about the American Revolution is that of Lord Cornwallis’s surrender to George Washington at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. It was the beginning of the end of the revolution; all that was left were long negotiations for a peace treaty. As the British Army left the field on October 19, their band showed their confusion and dejection at having been beaten by a bunch of wild colonial boys by playing the then-popular song “The World Turned Upside Down (PDF File, 560.9 KB)”.

A Sestercentennial Year

  1. Battle of Bennington
  2. Upside Down Yorktown ⬅︎
  3. Cherry Valley Massacre
  4. Battle of the Kegs
  5. Sestercentennial Cookery
  6. The New Colossus

I thought it would be kind of cool to do the music for “The World Turned Upside Down” using the piano script from 42 Astounding Scripts and Automations for the Macintosh. I didn’t know the song’s lyrics or its melody. All I knew was its title and the story of its use.

It turns out practically no one knows it. “The World Turned Upside Down” may be the most famous song in American history that practically no one knows. I’m not the only person who has noticed this. While I was searching for period sheet music, I ran across Dennis Montgomery’s similar observation on American Revolution.org:

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  1. <- Hymns