Note 8 — CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE (continued 3)
Reading edition
The following song was soon after composed by Mr. George Campbell (an Irish gentleman who had been educated in Dublin,) and was frequently sung in the neighborhood to the tune of the Black Joke.
Ye patriot souls who love to sing, What serves your country and your king, In wealth, peace, and royal estate; Attention give whilst I rehearse, A modern fact, in jingling verse, How party interest strove what it cou’d, To profit itself by public blood, But justly met its merited fate.
Let all those Indian traders claim, Their just reward, in glorious fame, For vile, base and treacherous ends, To Pollins in the spring they sent Much warlike stores, with an intent, To carry them to our barbarous foes, Expecting that nobody dare oppose A present to their Indian friends.
Astonished at the wild design Frontier inhabitants combin’d, With brave souls to stop their career, Although some men apostatized Who first the grand attempt advis’d, The bold frontiers they bravely stood, To act for their king, and their country’s good In joint league, and strangers to fear.
On March the fifth, in sixty-five, Their Indian presents did arrive, In long pomp and cavalcade, Near Sidelong-hill, where in disguise, Some patriots did their train surprise, And quick as lightning tumbled their loads And kindled them bonfires in the woods; And mostly burnt their whole brigade.
At Loudon when they heard the news, They scarcely knew which way to choose, For blind rage and discontent; At length some soldiers they sent out, With guides for to conduct the route, And seized some men that were travelling there And hurried them into Loudon, where They laid them fast with one consent.
But men of resolution thought Too much to see their neighbors caught For no crime but false surmise; Forthwith they join’d a warlike band, And march’d to Loudon out of hand, And kept the jailors pris’ners there, Until our friends enlarged were, Without fraud or any disguise.
Let mankind censure or commend, This rash performance in the end, Then both sides will find their account. ’Tis true no law can justify To burn our neighbors property, But when this property is design’d To serve the enemies of mankind, Its high treason in the amount.