Something for the weekend. On the hundredth anniversary of the start of World War I, There’s a Long Long Trail A-Winding, one of the more popular songs of the Great War, seems appropriate. Stoddard King wrote the lyrics and Alonzo Elliott composed the tune.  Two Yale seniors in 1913, they wrote the song during some idle time and sang it before their fraternity. The lyrics of the song seemed eeriely on point during the coming War:
 Nights are growing very lonely,
Days are very long;
I’m a-growing weary only
List’ning for your song.
Old remembrances are thronging
Thro’ my memory
Till it seems the world is full of dreams
Just to call you back to me.
Chorus:
- There’s a long, long trail a-winding
- Into the land of my dreams,
- Where the nightingales are singing
- And a white moon beams.
- There’s a long, long night of waiting
- Until my dreams all come true;
- Till the day when I’ll be going down
- That long, long trail with you.
- All night long I hear you calling,
- Calling sweet and low;
- Seem to hear your footsteps falling,
- Ev’ry where I go.
- Tho’ the road between us stretches
- Many a weary mile,
- I forget that you’re not with me yet
- When I think I see you smile.
Chorus:
- There’s a long, long trail a-winding
- Into the land of my dreams,
- Where the nightingales are singing
- And a white moon beams.
- There’s a long, long night of waiting
- Until my dreams all come true;
- Till the day when I’ll be going down
- That long, long trail with you.
Honest and true.
In 1939 the hit song was ‘Run, rabbit run’. My mother recalled that there was soon a new set of lyrics:
‘Run Adolf, run Adolf, run, run, run,
Look what you’ve been, gone and done, done, done.
We will knock the stuffing out of you,
Old tubby Goering and Goebbels too.
Run Adolf, run Adolf, run, run, run,
You’ll lose your place in the sun, sun, sun.
You will flop – with Herr von Ribbentrop,
So run, Adolf, run, Adolf, run, run, run!’