Dashing White Sergeant

[33rdaladrummer]

'Our attention was first attracted by a decayed old corporal, bent double with age, followed by a venerable drummer and a superannuated fife, one of whom was playing 'In the merry month of May," while the other was vacillating between "The Dashing White Sergeant" and The Soldier's Tear." '

Punch Magazine, Volume 9
1845

The tune appears in Howe's 1862 drum and fife instructor as well as an abbreviated version in the 1905 American Veteran Fifer.

I've attached the drum and fife music from Howe's. I wonder how popular it really was in its time.

[Bagman]

Re: Dashing White Sergeant

Will,

An opinion......it was a popular tune, certainly in Great Britain throughout the Victorian era. I offer that because, to this day, in a parallell universe, the tune is still heard in Scottish Country Dancing (...a kind of ethnic square dancing...). Also, I've heard it played by modern Canadian military bands at formal dress balls, and other functions, when I was stationed in Canada. It is a catchy tune. I'm not sure that answers your question as to how popular it was here during the CW. I have not heard it in any other context in our own country like say "Turkey in the Straw". Again, I base my observation on its continuing and enduring use up to today in the 21st century.

Jeff Christman
Liberty Hall Fifes & Drums
Stonewall Brigade

[guardbone89]

Re: Dashing White Sergeant

I do know that the tune of The Dashing White Sergeant (or at least a fragment of it) is featured in the Official West Point March, written for the Corps of Cadets in 1927 by Lt. Philip Enger, former bandmaster and music teacher at the U.S. Military Academy. I'm sure in that capacity, it is heard often up there at the Academy. It makes one wonder that the tune must have been popular there if it was included in the march...this was only 60-some years after the CW.