Blanche of Brandywine; Or, September the Eleventh, 1777. A Romance combining the poetry, legend and history of the battle of Brandywine. George Lippard, 1846.
Legends of the American Revolution, 1776; Or, Washington and his Generals. George Lippard. 1876
Myths and Legends of our Own Land. Charles Skinner 1896
LIFE Treasury of American Folklore (this book is the direct inspiration for the song). 1961
GEORGE LIPPARD
1846.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD.
THE MECHANIC HERO OF BRANDYWINE.
The Blacksmith was returning home.
As he went through the dim old forest, the light shone over his broad chest, now throbbing beneath the rude vest, stained with the blood of battle while his muscular right arm, bared to the shoulder, grasped the massive hammer, crimsoned to the very handle which he clutched, with the life current of the slain.
The Blacksmith was returning home, and a smile lighted up his bluff face, a beam of joy shone from his clear grey eye.
He was returning home, but not to the home of Dilworth Corner---ah no!
Let me tell you a secret of that rude Blacksmith's heart. One year ago he married a young wife, and took her to the rented cottage of Dilworth Corner. But since the last spring, he had been strangely absent from home, for an hour or more each day. Nay, his occasional holidays were spent away from his wife; he would leave his cottage early in the morning, and not return until the dusk of evening. When he returned· his brow was flushed, his frame wearied. He then replied to the anxious queries of' his wife, with a smile, and while she gathered her arms about his neck, and in that soft, persuasive voice, which a young woman and a young wife knows how to use so well, ask the cause of these mysterious departures from home, the hale blacksmith would laugh quietly to himself, and close her mouth with a kiss.
This mystery, these strange departures from home, had continued until last night, when the secret was explained in the most remarkable manner. The wife. had been on a visit to one of her relations, and it was almost night when her husband came to bring her home.
They were passing along the forest road together-a babe prattling all the while in the mother's arms-when suddenly emerging from the shade of the trees, their eyes were delighted with a sight of singular beauty.
It was a quiet cottage, nestling away there, in a dim nook of the forest road, a quiet cottage, overshadowed by a stout chesnut tree, with a small garden in front, a well-pole rising into light on one side, while on the other through the thickly gathered foliage, was seen the rude outlines of a blacksmith's shop.
There was something so beautiful in this sight, that the young wife uttered a cry of delight, nay even the babe, attracted.by the mother's voice, clapped its little hands and laughed aloud.
That garden, planted with beautiful flowers, and divided by a gravelled walk, the cottage with its casement half hidden among vines, the roof over-shadowed, by a giant chesnut tree, its broad green leaves shining in the last ray of the setting sun-ah, it was a quiet cottage, a dear home in the wilderness, where a man might toil hard for a whole life, and toil with pleasure, love his wife, and seek no joy but that which shone from her blue eyes, and die at last with children's faces around his head.
It was a lovely sight, and the young wife sighed as she whispered, what a pretty home it would make for a new married pair! Then she pointed to the trees that gathered around it, on every side, and drawing near the neatly-whitewashed fence, which separated the garden from the road, she uttered a new exclamation of delight. There, in the midst of the flowers, a clean spring bubbled forth, and sparkled along the garden until it was lost in the shade of the wood.
The wife sighed again. It was like a fairy tale, this cottage springing up so unexpectedly, in the centre of the wood. Who were the tenants of the quiet home? Happy people no doubt, for it were a kind of blasphemy to imagine that a single care might enter that cottage door. Happy people no doubt, who prayed to God every night and morning, loved their neighbors, and never cared a throb for death.
The young wife sighed, the babe catching gloom from its mother's face began to cry. The stout blacksmith said not a word, but leading his wife along the brown walk, pushed open the cottage door, and in a thick voice, bade her look upon her home!
Her home? Yes her new home! He had purchased a piece of ground, hoarded his earnings for a year, to employ the carpenter and mason; worked himself full many an hour, there in the garden and about the cottage, and now his arduous task was done. That very day he had removed the furniture from Dilworth Corner thither; the wife sat down, in her new home, with her babe reflecting back again the smile of joy, which came over her young face, as she kissed the brown face of the blacksmith from his forehead to his chin.
There was a Joy, born there in that cottage, in the moment when the wife sat down in her new home, such as never crossed the doors of all the marble palaces, built in the sweat and blood of millions, since the world began.
It was their home, their own! Ah that was the charm! Never to leave that Home, until the reverent hands of neighbors bore them to the Quaker graveyard, and laid them gently under the green sod. That was a thought to swell the heart of the young wife, and make the stout blacksmith tum aside and look into a closet to hide his tears.
In the moment of their joy, Iron Tom arose, and told his young wife that he must away to the camp of Washington. It was true he cared but little for battle, or war, so long as his stout arm, plying the hammer or the anvil, might gain bread for his wife and child, but he had overheard the plot of some Tory refugees, for the surprise and capture of Washington. Now careing but little for the panic which shook the valley, our stout blacksmith had a sneaking kindness for this man Washington, whose name rung on the lips of all men. He was resolved to hurry to Chadd's Ford, and there tell the Rebel Chief the plots of his enemies.
So bidding his wife a hasty good-bye and kissing the babe, that slept on her bosom, smiling as it slept, he hurried away. He reached the camp, but event crowding on event detained him till morning. Then the fight of the Ford gloomed over the valley; the brave blacksmith, as we have seen, could not resist the impulse of his heart. He joined the conflict, and fought in the bloody waters of the Brandywine. That conflict over, he was returning home, when the corse of Mary Mayland calling for vengeance awoke the devil in his heart, and sent him madly over the battle-field, offering many a bloody sacrifice to her ghost, with the fatal hammer in his hand.
That hammer red with British blood, his face and garments also stained, now that the first fiery tumult of the fight was past, he was at last returning home.
The sun half way down the western sky, shot his beams along the forest path, illumining his honest face with its kindly glow, as he hurried fast along.
Some few paces beyond, the bye-road took a sudden turn, around a stout oak, hoary with the honors of three hundred years.
The Blacksmith beheld the venerable tree, and felt his heart grow warm, for right beyond that oak was his home!
With this thought warming his heart, he hurried onward; thinking all the while of the calm young face and mild blue eyes of that wife, who the night before had stood at the cottage door, waving him out of sight, with a beckoned good-bye --- thinking all the while of the babe, who hung sleeping on her bosom, smiling in its sleep, he hurried on, he reached the oak, be looked upon his home ---
Ah, what a sight was here!
There, where the night before, he had left a peaceful cottage, smiling under a chesnut tree, in the light of the setting sun, there was now only a heap of black and smoking ruins, and a burnt and blasted tree!
This was his home!
For a moment the Blacksmith stood with folded arms surveying the ruins of his home, but that moment past a smile broke over his face.
He saw it all! In the night his home had taken fire and been burnt to cinders, but his wife, his child had escaped. For that he thanked God!
He did not despair --- not he! With the toil of his stout arm, he could build another and a better home for wife and child; He would plant a lovelier garden there; fairer flowers should bloom around the casement, the chesnut tree might flourish again, or a luxuriant vine gay with blossoms, would twine over the cottage roof---
As he stood there, in the glow of the declining sun, with this resolve kindling over his face, a hand was laid upon his shoulder-a cold, stiff hand, that chilled his blood ---
He turned and gazed upon the face of a neighbor. It was a neighbor's face, but there was an awful agony wreathing over those plain features and dashing from those dilating eyes --- there was a supernatural woe, heaving in that farmer's bosom, and speaking in the convulsive motion of those lips, that moved and moved, but made no sound.
The farmer tried to speak the horror which convulsed his features, but in vain. Still that convulsive motion of the lips, without a sound! At last urging the blacksmith along the brown walk of the garden, in silence he pointed to the smoking embers.
There, amid the ashes of his home, the blacksmith beheld a dark object hung over the wreck of his hearthstone--a dark mass of burnt flesh and blackened bones.
- --- "Your wife!" shrieked the farmer, as his agony found words, "Your wife-" and he pointed to that hideous thing. " The British, they came in the night, they--"
---He spoke the outrage which heart grows cold to think upon, which the tongue is palsied, but to name ---
"They burned your house. They flung the dead body of your wife into the flames. They dashed her babe against the hearthstone."
This was the farmer's story.
And there stood the Husband, the Father, gazing upon that mass of burnt flesh and blackened bones---all that was once his wife!
Last night, only last night, he had brought her to her new home, the babe smiling on her bosom, and now ---
Do you ask me for the words that quivered from his white lips? Do you ask me, whether a light like the glare of a Lost Soul, blazed from his eye!
I cannot tell you.
But I can tell you, that there was a hand upraised to heaven, that a vow went up to God!
Yes, as the warm sunshine streamed over the peeled skull of that fair young wife-she was that only last night,-up to the blue sky there went a vow, the last groan of a maddened heart.
Do the spirits of the VAST UNKNOWN ever look down upon the scenes of this world? Then was that vow written down by the angels of God!
How was it kept. this awful vow, thrilling through the still air, up to God?
Go there to the battle of the Brandywine, in its last and bloodiest hour! Wherever the fight is thickest, wherever the carnage is most bloody, there, may you see a stout form, striding madly on, there may you see a strong arm, lifting a huge hammer into light. It is the blacksmith's form. Where that hammer falls it kills, where that hammer strikes it crushes.
And the war-cry he shrieks as he goes on in his terrible career! Is it a boisterous shout, a wild hurrah? Is it but a mad cry of vengeance, heaving upward from his breaking heart? Ah, no, ah no!
It is the name of MARY.
It is the name of his young wife.
Mary! Thou mild-faced Mother of Jesus, beaming upon me now, even in the darkness of this midnight gloom, beaming upon me, with those large full eyes, divine as the eyes of a mother, loving as those of a sister, Mary! That name of thine is musical at all times, for it stirs the heart with its twin syllables of rippling melody, for its calls up the forms of loved ones, now dead and gone home, for it speaks of the dim long ago, when the tears of the Virgin Mother watered the paths of the Redeemer, for it speaks of all that is like God, in our love for woman! Mary! That name is full of deep, low-toned music at all times, amid all memories, but it never rang on the air, with such startling emphasis, as when it quivered from the white lips of the Blacksmith of Brandywine!
"Mary!" he shouts, as he strikes yon red-coated Britain down---"Mary!" he shrieks, as with one blow he hurls yon tinselled soldier from his steed --- "Mary!" quivers from his lips, as that fatal hammer sinks into the skull of yondering cowering wretch---" Mary," still Mary! as his form is last in the clouds of battle!
Thus like a man possessed by a demon, his breast bared, his arm rising and falling with a terrible impulse, he fought his way back to the Quaker graveyard, until he was encircled by a wall of dead, still rushing on the British with glaring eyes, and shouting Mary as the hammer fell.
Look yonder---in the centre of the combat---amid heaps of dying and dead---look yonder and behold a terrible scene.
A young officer, with floating locks of golden hair, kneels on the blood-stained sod, and clasps the blacksmith by the knees.
"Spare me!" he shrieks, "Quarter! I have a wife---a child in England---spare me!"
Then a tear stood in the eye of the frenzied blacksmith; the hammer hung suspended in the air.
"A wife---a child," he muttered, wiping the blood from his eyes. "I had a wife and child once, and---" he could not speak the outrage, but his wife, his child were there before his burning eyes---"And I could spare you, but d'ye see? The form of that wife has gone before me all day---she is there, now, there! She calls on me to strike! Mary!"
And the hammer fell. There was a mangled body on the sod of the Quaker graveyard; the wife and child in England, never beheld that gallant soldier again.
Then as if this deed had fired his veins with new energy, the Blacksmith rushed on again, and the hammer rose and fell, as though at every blow it struck an echoing anvil, instead of a human skull.
At last, sinking down in the centre of that graveyard, the blood streaming from his many wounds, his face, his hands, his hammer red, he wiped the blood from his eyes, and as though speaking to some one by his side, faintly muttered---"Mary!"
In the terrible hour of the retreat, when the din of battle brayed far away to the south, he was found sitting by the roadside, his leg broken, his head sunken on his breast, the blood streaming from his many wounds.
It was in a dark pass, where the narrow road was fenced in by high banks on either side; a dark pass, now growing darker with the gloom of twilight.
Here he was found by a waggoner, who had at least shouldered a cart whip in his country's service. The good-hearted fellow would have placed him in his wagon and borne him from the field, but the stout blacksmith refused. All he asked was to be placed at the foot of a cherry tree, that rose above the roadside.
"Yo' see my neighbor---" said the Blacksmith in that voice husky with death, " I never meddled with the British 'till they began to burn our houses and murder old men like dogs! and last night, they, they---" he could not speak that foul outrage, but his wife and her babe were there before his dying eyes---"And now I've but five minutes life in me, and all I ask is a rifle, a powder horn, and three balls. And d'ye see that ar' cherry tree? D'ye think you could lift a man of my build up thar?"
The waggoner placed him there, and placed a rifle in his grasp, with the powder horn and balls by his side. Then whipping his horses through the narrow pass, he reached the summit of the hill into which it rose, and looked down upon the last scene of the blacksmith's life.
There lay the stout man, at the foot of the cherry tree, his head sunken on his breast, the rifle in his grasp, his broken leg hanging over the bank, pattering its warm blood upon the brown earth below.
The shades of night began to fall. The sun was setting, but the woods were thick and dark.
There he lay with the life-blood welling from his many wounds---he was dying.
Suddenly a strange sound reached his ear! It was the wild hurrah of British soldiers; that sound called him back to life. He raised his head, he grasped his rifle. Soon breaking into view, one glittering array of crimson and steel, a band of British thronged the pass, mad with carnage and thirsting for blood. They pursued a scattered band of Continentals, who turning in their flight, fought their pursuers with weaponless hands. On came the British; an old man with grey hair, a veteran officer hastened them with shouts, and waved the way with his sword.
The Blacksmith raised his rifle-with an eye bright with death, he took the aim, he fired!
"That's for Washington!" he shrieked, as the grey-haired officer fell dead among his men.
Again with that eye brightening, with that hand stiffening in death, he loaded, he fired his rifle.
"That," he shrieked in his husky voice, "that is for Mad Antony Wayne!" And the pursuing British rode over another officer, trampling his face with their horses' hoofs.
On swept the scattered Continentals, on came the British, now turning their eyes and swords toward the wreck of a man, who placed at the foot of yonder tree, dealt death among their ranks. They rushed toward the bank, with shouts and curses. While the Continentals swept on their way, a fair-visaged Briton spurred his steed toward the cherry tree, his brown hair waving back from his brow.
As he came, the blacksmith looked upon his young face, with glazing eyes.
As he came, with that hand strong with the feeling of coming death, the sturdy freeman sitting under yonder cherry tree, again 'loaded, again raised his rifle.
He fired his last shot. The young officer swayed to and fro, and then with the blood spouting from the wound between his eyes, lay writhing on the sand.
A tear quivered in the eye of the dying blacksmith.
At that moment the last gleam of the setting sun, poured over his face, lighting up his fearful eyes.
"And that---" he cried in a husky voice, that strengthened into a shout--" And that's for---"
The shout died on his white lips. His voice was gone. His head sunk; his rifle fell.
A single word bubbled up with his dying groan.
---Even now, methinks I hear that word, that last sigh of a broken heart. echoing and trembling there, amid the woods of Brandywine!---
That word was---"MARY!"
THE LEGENDS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, l776; OR, WASHINGTON AND HIS GENERALS. By George Lippard
1876
372 THE BATTLE OF BRANDYWINE.
XVIII.---THE MECHANIC HERO OF BRANDYWINE.
NEAR Dilworth corner, at the time of the Revolution, there stood a quiet cottage, somewhat retired from the road, under the shade of a stout chesnut tree. It was a quiet cottage, nestling away there in one corner of the forestroad, a dear home in the wilderness, with sloping roof, walls of dark grey stone, and a casement hidden among vines and flowers.
On one side, amid an interval of the forest trees, was seen the rough outline of a blacksmith's shop. There was a small garden in front, with a brown gravelled walk, and beds of wild flowers.
Here, at the time of the Revolution, there dwelt a stout blacksmith, his young wife and her babe.---What cared that blacksmith, working away there in that shadowy nook of the forest, for war? What feared he for the peril of the times, so long as his strong arm, ringing that hammer on the anvil, might gain bread for his wife and child!
Ah, he cared little for war, he took little note of the panic that shook the valley, when some few mornings before the battle of the Brandywine, while shoeing the horse of a Tory Refugee, he overheard a plot for the surprise and capture of Washington. The American leader was to be lured into the toils of the tories; his person once in the British camp, the English General might send the "Traitor Washington" home, to be tried in London.
Now our blacksmith, working away there, in that dim nook of the forest, without caring for battle or war, had still a sneaking kindness for this Mister Washington, whose name rung on the lips of all men. So one night, bidding his young wife a hasty good-bye, and kissing the babe that reposed on her bosom, smiling as it slept, he hurried away to the American camp, and told his story to Washington.
It was morning ere he came back. It was in the dimness of the autumnal morning, that the blacksmith was plodding his way, along the forest road. Some few paces ahead there was an aged oak, standing out into the road---a grim old veteran of the forest, that had stood the shocks of three hundred years, Right beyond that oak was the blacksmith's home.
With this thought warming his heart, he hurried on. He hurried on, thinking of the calm young face and mild blue eyes of that wife, who, the night before, had stood in the cottage door, waving him out of sight with a beckoned good-bye---thinking of the baby, that lay smiling as it slept upon her bosom, he hurried on---he turned the bend of the wood, he looked upon his home.
Ah! what a sight was there!
Where, the night before, he had left a peaceful cottage, smiling under a green chesnut tree, in the light of the setting sun, now was only a heap of black and smoking embers and a burnt and blasted tree!
This was his home!
And there stood the blacksmith gazing upon that wreck of his hearth-stone;---there he stood with folded arms and moody brow, but in a moment a smile broke over his face.
He saw it all. In the night his home had taken fire, and been burned to cinders. But his wife, his child had escaped. For that he thanked God.
With the toil of his stout arm, plying there on the anvil, he would build a fairer home for wife and child; fresh flowers should bloom over the garden walks, and more lovely vines trail along the casement.
With this resolve kindling over his face, the blacksmith stood there, with a cheerful light beaming from his large grey eyes, when---a hand was laid upon his shoulder.
He turned and beheld the face of a neighbor.
It was a neighbor's face; but there was an awful agony stamping those plain features---there was an awful agony flashing from those dilating eyes ---there was a dark and a terrible mystery speaking from those thin lips, that moved, but made no sound.
For a moment that farmer tried to speak the horror that convulsed his features.
At last, forcing the blacksmith along the brown gravelled walk, now strewn with cinders, he pointed to the smoking embers. There, there---amid that heap of black and smoking ruins, the blacksmith beheld a dark mass of burnt flesh and blackened bones.
"Your wife!" shrieked the farmer, as his agony found words. "The British they came in the night they"---and then he spoke that outrage, which the lip quivers to think on, which the heart grows palsied to tell---that outrage too foul to name---"Your wife," he shrieked, pointing to that hideous thing amid the smoking ruins; "the British they murdered your wife, they flung her dead body in the flames---they dashed your child against the hearthstone!"
This was the farmer's story.
And there, as the light of the breaking day fell around the spot, there stood the husband, the father, gazing upon that mass of burned flesh and blackened bones-all that was once his wife.
Do you ask me for the words that trembled from his white lips? Do you ask me for the fire that blazed in his eye?
I cannot tell you. But I can tell you that there was a vow going up to Heaven from that blacksmith's heart; that there was a clenched hand, up, raised, in the light of the breaking day!
Yes, yes, as the first gleam of the autumnal dawn broke around the spot, as the first long gleam of sunlight streamed over the peeled skull of that fair young wife---she was that last night---there was a vow going up to Heaven, the vow of a maddened heart and anguished brain.
How was that vow kept? Go there to Brandywine, and where the carnage gathers thickest, where the fight is most bloody, there you may see a stout form striding on, lifting a huge hammer into light. Where that hammer falls, it kills---where that hammer strikes, it crushes! It is the blacksmith's form. And the war-cry that he shouts? It is a mad cry of vengeance ---half howl, half hurrah? ls it but a fierce yell, breaking up from his heaving chest?
Ah no! Ah no!
It is the name of---MARY! It is the name of his young wife!
Oh, Mary---sweetest name of women---name so soft, so rippling, so musical --- name of the Mother of Jesus, made holy by poetry and religion---how strangely did your syllables of music ring out from that blacksmith's lips, as he went murdering on!
"Mary!" he shouts, as he drags that red-coated trooper from his steed: "Mary!" he shrieks, as his hammer crashes down, laying that officer in the dust. Look! Another officer, with a gallant face and form---another officer, glittering in tinsel, clasps that blacksmith by the knees, and begs mercy.
"I have a wife---mercy! I have a wife yonder in England---spare me!"
The blacksmith, crazed as he is, trembles---there is a tear in his eye.
"I would spare you, but there is a form before me---the form of my dead wife! That form has gone before me all day! She calls on me to strike!"
And the hammer fell, and then rang out that strange war-cry---"Mary!"
At last, when the battle was over, he was found by a wagoner, who had at least shouldered a cartwhip in his country's service-he was found sitting by the roadside, his head sunken, his leg broken---the life blood welling from his many wounds.
The wagoner would have carried him from the field, but the stout blacksmith refused.
"You see, neighbor," he said, in that voice husky with death, "I never meddled with the British till they burned my home, till they---" he could not speak the outrage, but his wife and child were there before his dying eyes---" And now I've but five minutes' life in me. I'd like to give a shot at the British afore I die. D'ye see that cherry tree? D'ye think you could drag a man of my build up thar? Place me thar; give me a powderhorn, three rifle balls an' a good rifle; that's all I ask."
The wagoner granted his request; he lifted him to the foot of the cherry tree; he placed the rifle, the balls, the powder-horn in his grasp.
Then whipping his horses through the narrow pass, from the summit of a neighboring height, he looked down upon the last scene of the blacksmith's life.
There lay the stout man, at the foot of the cherry tree, his head. his broken leg hanging over the roadside bank. The blood was streaming from his wounds---he was dying.
Suddenly he raised his head---a sound struck on his ears. A party of British came rushing along the narrow road, mad with carnage and thirsting for blood. They pursued a scattered band of Continentals. An officer led the way, waving them on with his sword.
The blacksmith loaded his rifle; with that eye bright with death he took the aim. "That's for Washington!" he shouted as he fired. The officer lay quivering in the roadside dust. On and on came the British, nearer and nearer to the cherry tree---the Continentals swept through the pass. Again the blacksmith loaded---again he fired. "That's for mad Anthony Wayne!" he shouted as another officer bit the sod.
The British now came rushing to the cherry tree, determined to cut down the wounded man, who with his face toward them, bleeding as he was, dealt death among their ranks. A fair-visaged officer, with golden hair waving on the wind, led them on.
The blacksmith raised his rifle; with that hand stiffening in death, he took the aim---he fired---the young Briton fell with a sudden shriek.
"And that," cried the blacksmith, in a voice that strengthened into a shout, "and that's for---"
His voice was gone! The shriek died on his white lips.
His head sunk---his rifle fell.
A single word bubbled up with his death groan. Even now, methinks I hear that word, echoing and trembling there among the rocks of Brandywine. That word was---MARY!
Terrible in the field at Brandywine was the figure of a man armed only with a hammer, who plunged into the ranks of the enemy, heedless of his own life, yet seeming to escape their shots and sabre cuts by magic, and with Thor strokes beat them to the earth. But yesterday war had been to him a distant rumor, a thing as far from his cottage at Dilworth as if it had been in Europe, but he had revolted at a plot that he had overheard to capture Washington and had warned the general. In revenge the Tories had burned his cottage, and his wife and baby had perished in the flames. All day he had sat beside the smoking ruins, unable to weep, unable to think, unable almost to suffer, except dumbly, for as yet he could not understand it. But when the drums were heard they roused the tiger in him, and gaunt with sleeplessness and hunger he joined his countrymen and ranged like Ajax on the field. Every cry for quarter was in vain: to every such appeal he had but one reply, his wife's name - Mary.
Near the end of the fight he lay beside the road, his leg broken, his flesh torn, his life ebbing from a dozen wounds. A wagoner, hasting to join the American retreat, paused to give him drink. "I've only five minutes more of life in me," said the smith. "Can you lift me into that tree and put a rifle in my hands?" The powerful teamster raised him to the crotch of an oak, and gave him the rifle and ammunition that a dying soldier had dropped there. A band of red-coats came running down the road, chasing some farmers. The blacksmith took careful aim; there was a report, and the leader of the band fell dead. A pause; again a report rang out, and a trooper sprawled upon the ground. The marksman had been seen, and a lieutenant was urging his men to hurry on and cut him down. There was a third report, and the lieutenant reeled forward into the road, bleeding and cursing. "That's for Mary," gasped the blacksmith. The rifle dropped from his hands, and he, too, sank lifeless against the boughs.
The principal events in this story of a heroic colonial blacksmith sound so plausible that there is some likelihood it has basis in fact. Whether or not it actually did occur as retold here, no one can say. It is a legend of Washington's campaign in Pennsylvania.
About the time the American Revolution was changing from skirmishes into a war there stood near Dilworth Corner, on the road to Chester, Pennsylvania, a charming, slope-roofed cottage of dark stone. Vines, trees and a flower garden almost hid it from the road. At one side of the cottage stood a smithy.
Here lived a blacksmith, a kind, hard-working man devoted to his wife and infant child. He wanted nothing more than to give them all he could earn with his strong arm, his forge and his name as an honest craftsman. Rumors of revolution and possible war increased as the weeks passed, but the big blacksmith shrugged them off. Even when fighting began and customers came into the smithy talking of fierce engagements between Colonials and British and of the courage of General Washington, he paid little heed. War was not for him. He had his wife and tiny son to think of, and he stuck to his forge.
But one morning - the day before the Battle of Brandywine, it turned out - a Tory refugee came into the smithy to have his horse reshod. The Tory spoke freely to others, ignoring the blacksmith. A carefully conceived plan was under way, he said, to lure "the traitor Washington" into a trap, kidnap him, take him to England and there try him for treason.
The blacksmith wanted anything but to be involved in the war, but he had conceived a quiet admiration for this man Washington. Surely he could sacrifice a night's sleep for him. That night when work was done he kissed his baby goodby, said farewell to his wife and hurried to the camp of the American army. There he saw Washington and warned him of the kidnap plot. That done, and having accepted the commander's thanks, he started for home. When at dawn he reached Dilworth Corner he found that his home no longer existed. Everything was burned except the blackened stone walls.
For a moment uncomprehending terror seized him. Where were his wife and child? But then he thought that surely they would have had time to escape - especially since the house was made of stone - and had been taken in and sheltered by kind neighbors. He would rebuild the house better than ever, with finer vines and more beautiful flowers. But a neighbor put a hand on his shoulder and, unable to speak, led the blacksmith closer to the still-warm rubble. He finally managed to tell the awful tale. The British had come in the night, murdered the wife and child, and had flung their bodies into the flames. Among the ruins he saw the little mass of blackened flesh and bone.
The blacksmith turned toward his smithy and hunted for his biggest hammer. He then made his way back toward Brandywine where the battle had just begun. The fighting soldiers looked up to see a strange sight - a tall, big-shouldered man in the thick of the fighting, crushing English skulls as fast as he could swing a huge hammer. Each time he killed an enemy he cried out his wife's name.
He dragged a red-coated trooper from his horse, cried "Mary," and swung his hammer. another soldier fell at his feet, an officer in handsome uniform. "Mercy," he cried, "mercy. I have a wife yonder in England."
"I would spare you," replied the blacksmith, "but there is a form before me, and she calls on me to strike." The hammer fell.
But the blacksmith did not escape wounds himself. As the battle ended, a wagoner found him sitting by the roadside, a leg broken, blood flowing from many wounds. The wagoner offered to carry him from the field. "No, neighbor," said the blacksmith. "I never meddled with the British until they burned my home and killed - " He could not bring himself to say it. "I have five minutes' live left in me. I'd like another chance at them before I die. Could you drag a man of my build up into that cherry tree? And give me a powder horn, a good rifle and three rifle balls?"
The wagoner did as he was asked. Soon a party of British, led by an officer, came up the road pursuing a small group of Continentals.
The blacksmith raised his rifle. "For Washington," he murmured and fired. The officer fell dead. He took aim again. "For Mad Anthony Wayne." A soldier died. Other British saw where the fire came from and , rallied by another officer, charged the cherry tree. Once more the blacksmith aimed and brought down the officer. "And that," he shouted, "was for ..."
But before he could utter Mary he was dead.
I'm still trying to track down the origin of this story. If you happen to run across a mention of this story outside of the song or these books, please email me at calonkatspam@yahoo.com (remove spam first)