Red Wing (song)

"Red Wing" is a popular song written in 1907 with music by Kerry Mills and lyrics by Thurland Chattaway. Mills adapted the music from Robert Schumann's composition for piano "The Happy Farmer, Returning From Work" from his 1848 work Album for the Young, Opus 68. The song tells of a young Indian maid's loss of her sweetheart who has died in battle. It is most memorable for its chorus:

Now the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing,

The breeze is sighing, the night bird's crying,

For afar 'neath his star her brave is sleeping,^{[N 1]}

While Red Wing's weeping her heart away.^[1]

1. ^ in later versions usually: "For a far far away her brave is dying"

The song has been recorded numerous time in many different styles. It was parodied, in a version perpetuated among British schoolchildren, which begins with the line, "The moon's shining down on Charlie Chaplin." (See Iona and Peter Opie's The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren.) The original version was sung by John Wayne and Lee Marvin in the 1961 film The Comancheros. In 1950 Oscar Brand recorded a bawdy version in his Bawdy Songs & Backroom Ballads, Volume 3.

References

External links

• "Red Wing", Frederick H. Potter with the Edison Male Quartette (Edison Gold Moulded 9622, 1907)—Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project.
• "Red Wing" (Sheet music)"—The Charles H. Templeton, Sr. Sheet Music Collection, Mississippi State University.