Dear Readers: Today is Memorial Day. Please remember those servicemen and women who have died serving their country. You can honor our fallen heroes by visiting cemeteries and placing flags or flowers on the graves of veterans. It is also
Dear Readers: Today is Memorial Day. Please remember those servicemen and women who have died serving their country. You can honor our fallen heroes by visiting cemeteries and placing flags or flowers on the graves of veterans. It is also customary to fly the flag at half-staff until noon.
Dear Annie: A few years ago, on Memorial Day, you printed the words to “Taps.” Very few people actually know the history of this melody.
Until the Civil War, there was a bugle call known as Lights Out or Extinguish Lights. The melody was a variation of a common military tune called a tattoo, and was written by Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott and first published in 1835. Union Gen. Daniel Butterfield, who could not read music, adapted the tune for his brigade in 1862 with the help of his brigade bugler, Oliver Norton. This adaptation became known as taps.
Later that year, Capt. John C. Tidball started the custom of playing taps at a military funeral. A corporal in his unit died, and Tidball wanted to bury him with full honors, which included a three-gun salute, but his request was denied because of the closeness of the enemy positions. Instead, he decided to play Butterfield’s version of taps. The new bugle call quickly spread to other units, and it became a standard component of U.S. military funerals in 1891.
Butterfield died in 1901, and taps was played at his funeral. No one knows who wrote the words, but I’d appreciate it if you could print them again. — New York History Buff
Dear History Buff: We would be honored to do so:
“Taps”
Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake, from the skies.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.
Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,
May the soldier or sailor, our God keep.
On the land or the deep,
Safe in sleep.
Love, good night, must thou go,
When the day, and the night need thee so?
All is well. Speedeth all
To their rest.
Fades the light; and afar,
Goeth day, and the stars shineth bright,
Fare thee well; day has gone,
Night is on.
Thanks and praise, for our days,
’Neath the sun, ’neath the stars, ‘neath the sky,
As we go, this we know,
God is nigh.
Annie’s Mailbox is written by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, longtime editors of the Ann Landers column. Email questions to anniesmailbox@comcast.net, or write to: Annie’s Mailbox, c/o Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd St., Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
