"The Girl I Left Behind" also known as "The Girl I Left Behind Me" is a long-standing popular folk tune and song, dated by most authorities[1] to the late 18th or early 19th century.[2]
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The first known printed text of a song with this name appeared in the serial song collection The Charms of Melody, Dublin, Ireland, issue no. 72, printed in Dublin from 1791[3] and in Exshaw's Magazine (Dublin, September 1794).[4] The earliest known version of the melody was printed about 1810 in Hime's "Pocket Book for the German Flute or Violin" (Dublin), vol. 3, p. 67, under the title "The Girl I left Behind Me" (National Library of Ireland, Dublin).[5] Theodore Ralph claimed that it was known in America as early as 1650, under the name "Brighton Camp",[6] but there is no evidence to support this assumption, and the only known tune of "Brighton Camp"[7] differed from that of the song in question.
It has many variations and verses, for example "Blyth Camps, Or, the Girl I left behind Me" (1812, Newcastle), "Brighton Camp, or the Girl I left behind Me" (1815, Dublin, from which the "Brighton" title probably came), and others. Here is one example:
A number of Irish-language and English-language songs were set to this tune in Ireland in the 19th century, such as "An Spailpín Fánach" (translated into English as "The Rambling Labourer"), The Rare Old Mountain Dew (published New York, 1882) and in the 20th century, such as Waxie's Dargle.
In England the tune is often known as "Brighton Camp" and is used for Morris Dancing.
The song was popular in the US regular army, who adopted it during the War of 1812 after they heard a British prisoner singing it. [8] The song was used by the Army as a marching tune throughout the 19th century.
These are the lyrics popular by the army in the 19th century:
During the Civil War the Confederates had their own version:
Lincoln's assassination inspired another version.[9]
This tune has been quoted in some pieces of classical music, such as:
The theme, "The Girl I Left Behind," can be heard as an overlay in Glenn Miller's arrangement of "American Patrol," popularized during the World War II.
The song has a march beat and has often been associated with British and American military bands, especially in the context of soldiers heading out to (or returning from) battle. The tune is easy to play on the fife, and is one of two songs often associated with the famous The Spirit of '76 painting, along with "Yankee Doodle". One example in popular culture which illustrates this cliché is at the end of the Bugs Bunny cartoon, A Wild Hare, in which the bunny marches into the sunset at the end of the cartoon, playing the tune on a fife (in reality, a carrot) and effecting a stiff leg as with the fifer in the painting.
Ewan MacColl's song Ivor uses the tune to wryly mock the supposedly favourable treatment given to Ivor Novello in prison during World War II.[10] The tune appears in the Popeye Cartoon Popeye the Sailor meets Sindbad the Sailor. Popeye mumbles to it under his breath as he marches toward his final confrontation with Sindbad. "The Frogs and the Lobsters", an episode of the Hornblower television series, features the tune being played by a band of the Royal Marines, along with the first few bars of "Rule Britannia". The song appears several times in the TV movie Sharpe's Company. In a 1960s Beverly Hillbillies episode, the melody is used for the commercial jingle "the best durn soap is Foggy Mountain Soap".
The tune has also been used as a theme for western films about Indian Wars, such as a 1915 silent film about Custer, titled The Girl I Left Behind Me and a theme in the soundtrack of the John Ford and John Wayne "Cavalry Trilogy", including Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. In the 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade a detachment of British soldiers whistle the tune just before the battle of the Alma. In the Australian film Breaker Morant, 'The Girl I Left Behind' is sung during the comedic episode when Peter Hancock vindicates himself of a murder charge by explaining to the court, his alibi of 'visiting' lady friends.
"The Girl I Left Behind" has been recorded many times, by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, Joyce Anderson and Matt Cunningham, among others.