The Rebel Yell

[Ken]

I know a while back there was some discussion about what the Rebel Yell actuall sounded like. I came across this interesting MOC video of veterans actually doing the call. The MOC took the single recording and mutiplied it by about 70 voices. I can see why this would put the fear of God in the yanks. Check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfHylwlq9Ow

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Hallo!

I have the CD.

I had some doubts watching the reenactment version, but I must say at the end of Part 2 they did a credible job of it.

What is interesting about the CD version is that they took the early radio sound recording of a Confederate veteran, and they manipulated the tones to reproduce more tonal ranges likely to have been heard with a larger range of mens' voices and then created IIRC a 70 man company, 500 man battalion, and a 1800 man brigade's worth.

Of course the whole effort is based upon the one elderly veteran's recollection, "cross referenced" to a second elderly vet's recollection to help make it less than just one person's experience/memory.

Interesting.
Doubly interesting if the research would ever actually catch on in reenacting culture.

Curt

[Matthew Semple]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Several years ago an older gentleman in the unit I fell in with did the same sort of sounds for the Rebel Yell during an event. It caught me off guard as not being my interpretation of what it would have sounded like. Afterwards I questioned him about it at which point he provided me with the web link of the elderly veteran which was made some three decades after the war. I was skeptical at first and didn't think it was a true representation because it was just one veteran's rememberance of what he (and only himself) did for the Rebel Yell.

After reviewing the link in this thread and hearing the second veteran's example it became very clear that this is probably what the Rebel Yell actually sounded like. After hearing the second veteran's (from a completely differnt unit) version it truly sent shivers down my spine.

I am in the process of purchsing the DVD form the MOC and can't wait to watch the presenation.

Thank you to Mr. Raia and Mr. Schmidt for posting and replying to this thread.

[sam H]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Sold more of those CD's than I ever care to remember. But it is cool to get a company of guys at an event to do the rebel yell "the right way." Definitley adds something more to cheesy tacticals where their would normally be a bunch of yeehaws from yahoos.

[PetePaolillo]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Shelby Foote quoted in Ken Burns Civil War, a unknown Northerner who was speaking of the Rebel Yell. " If you clamied you have heard it and weren't scared that means you never heard it." I will admit hearing that recording sent a little chill up my back, magnified a 1000 times on a battlefield must have been heart wrenching.


Go to 4:03 of this video for more. (disclaimer At the time the recording of the above Rebel Yell was not known, but the description was similiar)

[Hank Trent]

Re: The Rebel Yell

I hate videos because you can't skim. They asked about the origin at one point and did they ever answer that? Isn't it a hunting cry based on hunting with dogs or has that origin been discredited? There's also the "hip hip hip" of English hunting dinners and toasts, but that seems too formal and institutionalized to have spread directly to the average southerner; I think that the English toast version probably came from the more natural hunting cry in the field, which is what the rebel yell was mimicking.

Edited to add: Just listened to the Shelby Foote video and he mentions the fox hunting cry (the English one?). I don't think it was limited to foxes, though; I think it was in broader use in the U.S.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[john duffer]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Hank

Douglas Southall Freeman (he was writing 70 years ago but I trust him over most any author), in LEE'S LIEUTENANTS, mentions it originating at Bull Run: "The wierd cry of the Southern foxhunters swelled at the prospect of such a chase as none of them had known before."

[Blair]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Have you hunted with dogs before?
How do you encourage the dogs to the hunt?
You call out to them in a high pitched yip, yip, or hi ya, hi ya sound, to excite them. This lets them know your there in support of them.
I've heard this sound on the recording many times before. (in voices of two's and three's)
It will bring your blood, and the dogs, up to a boiling point.
Night hunting with dogs (just one of many types of hunting) can actually be a very enlighten experience. You never have to stir your stumps (or kill a critter) to get all riled up.
How do you call the dogs to home, after the hunt?
You call to them in a lower pitched, ha ya, ha ya sound. As if to say "here you", "here you", come to me!
Just a thought from an old dog hunter.

[PetePaolillo]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Not my intention to throw this thread in another direction, but history has shown us that Slave owners tracked their runaway slaves using Dogs cited here. There was also instances when Rebels used Dogs to track Yankees as cited here . Maybe the Rebel yell derived from these kinds of expierences in using Dogs to hunt?

[Jon The Beloved]

Re: The Rebel Yell

The 26th O.V.I.'s W.W. Gist wrote in 1915 for the Veteran his recollection of the 1864 Battle of Franklin "There was a Yankee yell as well as a Rebel yell, en match; and we always thought we put more volume into our yell than did our opponents across the field. To me their voices seemed pitched on a higher key than our own."

[Lance Stifle]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Hello Blair
interesting description on encouraging the dogs on and calling them off....pity we can't used it on pseudo-intellectuals !!!
It's pretty much what we used to do over here in Australia with Kangaroo dogs (a heavy kind of Greyhound the size of a Great Dane) but our blokes were usually mounted when they followed.

Funny how some things are the same over the other side of the world.

Kim Stewart-Gray

[Auld Pelty]

Re: The Rebel Yell

I have a middle-aged friend in Somerset, England who has been hunting with beagles since he was a boy. He had studied the American Civil War and he believes the Rebel Yell likely had it origin in hunting. He has listened to the tapes and here is what he had to say,

"yelling or hollering as we call it here is a important part of hunting, the correct holler sounds very much like the Rebel yell , it is used because the noise seems to travel farther , if someone is in front of the pack spots the prey and hollers that is known as hollering on , if you are behind things and the prey doubles back then that is hollering back , if the prey crosses a road or river or such like and you holler ,when the pack arrives you shout to the huntsman "tally ho over" then he knows at once what as happened as he will not have time to wait for a full explanation, also over a long distance you can get a relay of hollers ,so then you shout "hoke holler " and the huntsman knows you have not seen the prey but are just relaying the holler."

[NCSoldier]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Ive lived in, and hunted in, South Eastern North Carolina and along the border of South Carolina all of my life. Running dogs is a big thing around here. Yips, Yelps, hollers, hoots, and yells are almost an inherited thing. Listening to the recordings of "The Rebel Yell" puts me in a cut field running beagles, makes me flash back to hot nights stomping through briars, thigh deep in mud chasing coon dogs, and standing alone in a plot of new pine trees listening to the dogs run a deer. I would bet all sorts of money on it that the "Yell" comes from hunting dogs. Before CB's and handhelds became the main form of communication on the hunt, yelping and hollering was the way it was done, and is still popular.

[Bullshark]

Re: The Rebel Yell

Very much like the hunting and herding crys we use with our dogs hunting deer, hogs and rabbits. Also herding cattle out of the woods with our Catahoulas.