tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post3763066643027054664..comments2024-03-28T04:26:30.557-05:00Comments on Boston 1775: “With Blood the ground is dyed”Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-76631308455562544432012-04-21T10:36:42.320-05:002012-04-21T10:36:42.320-05:00I think it comes down to the M.H.S.’s provenance. ...I think it comes down to the M.H.S.’s provenance. If this document entered the collection through the Rev. Jeremy Belknap, then it predates Longfellow’s poem and may have been the impetus for Belknap’s inquiry to Revere. The poem might not have been published until after Longfellow made Revere famous because it didn’t seem to have historical or poetic merit on its own.<br /><br />If the manuscript’s not documented until 1878, then the popularity of Longfellow’s poem might have influenced its creation. But it’s hard to figure out why a forger trying to create an “authentic” but folksy account of the battle would get so much wrong by 1870s standards. <br /><br />Longfellow was a member of the M.H.S., so it’s conceivable that someone showed him, as the poetry expert, this verse. But I’ve never heard of any evidence for that.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-87154621162644741272012-04-21T09:28:37.242-05:002012-04-21T09:28:37.242-05:00If I read J. L.'s introduction correctly, the ...If I read J. L.'s introduction correctly, the Stiles manuscript is dated 1795, but no part of it was published until 1878 -- or 17 years after the publication of Longfellow's famous poem. Do we know anything about what happened to the manuscript in the intervening 83 years? How many people were aware of the poem's very existence?<br /><br />The Stiles manuscript, if dated correctly, also predates Revere's own description of his ride, published in 1798.<br /><br />It's interesting that Stiles makes the same errors that Longfellow did. Is there any evidence that Longfellow was aware of Stiles' previous effort?<br /><br />My own research has documented that Longfellow had a copy of Revere's description of the ride in his personal library, and he almost certainly used Revere's text as a source for his own poem in 1860. It's also easy to see how Longfellow took poetic license and changed the storyline to fit his own needs, and to adapt the story to existing 19th-century mythology (as created by R. W. Emerson).<br /><br />Personally, I'm starting to smell a hoax here. Is there any possibility that the Stiles manuscript was written AFTER Longfellow's poem became popular, and backdated to 1795?Charles Bahnenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-82847766593378216732012-04-20T20:38:12.566-05:002012-04-20T20:38:12.566-05:00It doesn’t reach the inspired depths of William To...It doesn’t reach the inspired depths of William Topaz McGonagall, but it comes close.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-28225146051612609822012-04-20T19:28:28.946-05:002012-04-20T19:28:28.946-05:00The poem is bloody awful. It's like fingernail...The poem is bloody awful. It's like fingernails screeching on the blackboard of history....steenkinbadgershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11786861131385768726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-68511535153969162362012-04-20T10:26:57.636-05:002012-04-20T10:26:57.636-05:00I did my usual poking around to try to blow the li...I did my usual poking around to try to blow the lid off this “Eb. Stiles,” and found nothing solid. Unfortunately, the name Ebenezer was quite common in the 1700s, and the poem takes such a wide view of the event that this Ebenezer Stlles could have come from almost anywhere in New England. <br /><br />One of my theories is that Stiles wrote the poem for some private gathering of veterans, and it came to the Rev. Jeremy Belknap’s attention, prompting him to ask Revere for his famous look back on that night. But that’s based on the idea that it entered the M.H.S. collections very early, and I’m not 100% sure about that.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-7955064606788117312012-04-20T08:42:47.453-05:002012-04-20T08:42:47.453-05:00Thanks for these posts, the poem is great.
Do you...Thanks for these posts, the poem is great.<br /><br />Do you know anything more about Stiles? Do we know, for example, whether he's any relation of Ezra Stiles? (The first time I tweeted the poem, I accidentally attributed it to Ezra out of a simple brain malfunction from seeing E + Stiles and assuming too much.)Joseph M. Adelmanhttp://josephadelman.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com