Regimental Song - John Peel

John was a farmer, not from the gentry. He managed to hunt two and sometimes three days a week.

It was the prospect of steady work that attracted John Woodcock Graves, a restless young coach painter from nearby Wigton, to move into the village for a job as a mill manager. That's where he met John Peel who kept a kennel of hounds - for which he earned £40 a year by hiring them out to various hunts. John later became the local MFH (Mater of Foxhounds).

When both men were in the heyday of their manhood they met one night at Graves's house at Caldbeek, to arrange some hunting matter. The grandmother of Graves's children was singing a child to sleep with an old nursery rhyme known as Bonnie Annie, or Whar wad Bonnie Annie lie, and Graves became struck by the idea of writing a song in honour of Peel to the tune the old lady was singing. He completed a version before Peel left the house and jokingly remarked 'By Jove, Peel, you'll be sung when we are both run to earth'. Peel died in 1854, aged seventy-eight, and was buried at Caldbeck. The song, sung to a version of Bonnie Annie, seems to have had a long traditional popularity before it got into print, and was probably first published on a music sheet by Mr William Meteclfe of Carlisle about 1870 or 1880. There are two distinct versions of the tune of John Peel, the one being a corruption from the other, and both differing materially from the old nursery rhyme. The tune Whar wad Bonnie Annie lie or Whar wad our Guidman lie, is found in several early Scottish publications. It is, however, founded on an English Country Dance called Red House, printed in The Dancing Master, 1703, and greatly used in the early ballad operas of the first part of the 18th century.
See John Peel site.

Do ye ken John Peel with his coat so grey?
Do ye ken John Peel at the break of day?
Do ye ken John Peel when he's far, far away
With his hounds and his horn in the morning.
Chorus:

Twas the sound of his horn brought me from my bed
And the cry of his hounds has me oftimes led
For Peel's view holloa would wake the dead
Or a fox from his lair in the morning

3. Yes, I ken John Peel and auld Ruby, too
Ranter and Royal and Bellman so true
From the drag to the chase, from the chase to the view
From the view to the death in the morning
Chorus:

4. And I've followed John Peel both often and far
O'er the rasper fence and the gate and the bar
From Low Denton Holme to the Scratchmere Scar
When we vied for the brush in the morning.
Chorus:

5. Then here's to John Peel with my heart and soul
Come fill, fill to him a brimming bowl
For we'll follow John Peel thro fair or thro foul
While we're waked by his horn in the morning.
Chorus:

Blackhawk was a Sauk warrior that was born in 1767 at Aukenuk, three to five miles above the point where the Rock River meets the Mississippi River. Blackhawk was not an Indian chief, he was a warrior recognized as a leader by the Sauk and Mesquakie nations, but according to his autobiography, the rank of chief had eluded him.

Black Hawk's Indian name w as Black Sparrow Hawk, his wife was Singing Bird and they had two daughters and three sons.

Sport's legend Jim Thorpe was Black Hawk's great grandson. In the War of 1812, Black Hawk fought for the British with his followers, known as the British Band. They were responsible for the victories at Campbell's Island and Credit Island.

The Black Hawk war started in April 1832, when Black Hawk and about 1,000 followers crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois from Iowa Territory where they had been forcibly moved the year before. The war lasted just 15 weeks, ending on August 2, 1832, at the Battle of bad Axe, Wisconsin.

Black Hawk died in October 3, 1838, of a respiratory illness. He was buried sitting up inside a small mausoleum of logs but his grave was robbed soon after. His remains were later deposited in a museum in Burlington, Iowa. The museum and its contents were destroyed by fire in 1855.