Break the News to Mother

Break the news to Mother
From US Sheet music (1897) 

While the shot and shell were screaming upon the battle field
The boys in blue were fighting their noble flag to shield;
Came a cry from their brave captain, “Look boys! Our flag is down;
Who’ll volunteer to save it from disgrace?”
“I will,” a young voice shouted, “I’ll bring it back or die”;
Then sprang into the thickest of the fray;
Saved the flag but gave his young life; all for his country’s sake;
They brought him back and softly heard him say:

“Just break the news to mother,
She knows how dear I lover her,
And tell her not to wait for me,
For I’m not coming home;
Just say there is no other
Can take the place of mother;
Then kiss her dear, sweet lips for me,
And break the news to her.”

From a far a noted general had witnessed this brave deed.
“Who saved our flag? Speak up lads, ‘twas noble, brave, indeed!”
There he lies, sir,” said the captain, “he’s sinking very fast;”
When slowly turned away to hide a tear.
The general in a moment, knelt down beside the boy;
Then gave a cry that touch’d all hearts that day.
It’s my son, my brave young hero; I thought you safe at home.”
“Forgive me, father, for I ran away.”

An early Tin Pan Alley song found widely in the repertoire of traditional singers throughout the English speaking world. It was one of a number of songs written about one conflict which enjoyed greater success in another. This song was originally written in response to a 1896 drama about the American Civil War but the songwriter, Charles K Harris, believing that the audience for a song about the Civil War would be limited, filed it away until the Spanish-American war of 1898. A year later it crossed the Atlantic and was widely sung in Britain at the time of the 2nd Boer War (1899-1902).

An early historian of the Halls, Maurice Willson Disher, took a dim view of such imports, though I suspect this may have been more to do with a resistance to a perceived Americanisation of entertainment than criticism of profiteering by music publishers:

The Spanish-American conflict of 1898 was over so soon that …. by 1899 [the songs] had about as much interest as out-of-date newspapers, and the United States would weep over them no more. It was then, month by month, that trouble became inevitable in the Transvaal. With ample time for preparation, publishers on both sides of the Atlantic arranged for the performance in Great Britain of the stuff that had sprung from minds under the real stimulus of war. The transfer of patriotic outbursts from one country to the other succeeded zestfully. Without the slightest suspicion that the goods they were consuming were second-hand, the audiences of English music-halls and pantomimes enthusiastically cheered ballads in honour of imaginary heroes who had already died, in an entirely different cause from the one now under consideration, for the sake of profitable fiction.

Maurice Willson Disher in Victorian Song (1935)

The sheet music shown here is the UK 1899 sheet music for Break the News to Mother.

Willson-Disher suggested that other imported Spanish-American war songs included Goodbye Dolly Gray and Blue Bell – though Blue Bell seems to have been first published 6 years after the Spanish-American conflict, in 1904.

All these and other songs were revived again in World War 1 …

Attentive readers may notice that, unlike most songs produced in Britain at turn of the century, the British performance rights don’t seem to have been owned by any individual singer and the list of notable performers is relatively long.

An early recording by George Gaskin from 1899 (surface noise):

The Louvin Brothers sing it in 1956:

Sources:

• Entries in the Roud Indexes at the Vaughn Williams Memorial Library: https://archives.vwml.org/search/all:single[folksong-broadside-books]/0_50/all/score_desc/extended-roudNo_tr%3A4322
• Kilgarrif Sing Us
• Ballad Index
• Lyrics and US Sheet Music, 1897: Harris, Charles Kassell, “Break the News to Mother” (1897). Historic Sheet Music Collection. 163.
• UK Sheet Music, 1917: Australian War Memorial