Fiddler's Green

Fiddler's Green is the happy land imagined by sailors where there is perpetual mirth, a fiddle that never stops playing and dancers that never tire.

History

It features in an old English legend:

They say that an old salt who is tired of seagoing should walk inland with an oar over his shoulder. When he comes to a pretty little village deep in the country and the people ask him what he is carrying... he will know that he's found Fiddlers Green. The people give him a seat in the sun outside the Village Inn with a glass of grog that refills itself every time he drains the last drop and a pipe forever smoking with fragrant tobacco. From then onwards he has nothing to do but enjoy his glass and pipe and watch the maidens dancing to the music of a fiddle on Fiddlers Green.

This legend may have some of its origin in Tiresias' prophecy in Homer's Odyssey, in which he tells Odysseus that the only way to appease the sea god Poseidon and find happiness is to take an oar and walk until he finds a land where he is asked what he is carrying, and there make his sacrifice.

It is also the subject of numerous songs, including this about a fisherman who is dying at the dockside

As I walked by the dockside one evening so rare

To view the saltwater and taste the salt air

I spied an old fisherman singing this song

Oh take me away, boys, my time is not long-

"Wrap me up in my oil skin and blanket,

No more 'round the docks I'll be seen,

Just tell me old shipmates,

I'm takin a trip, mates,

and I'll see you some day in Fiddler's Green"

This song was written and is copyrighted by John Connolly, an English songwriter Copyright 1970 for the World, March Music Ltd SOF, and has since passed into tradition and is sung worldwide in nautical and Irish traditional circles.

Furthermore, a ballad was written anonymously for the US cavalry, published in a 1923 US Cavalry Manual. It is still used in modern cavalry units to memorialize the deceased.

Halfway down the trail to hell

In a shady meadow green,

Are the souls of all dead troopers camped

Near a good old-time canteen

And this eternal resting place

Is known as Fiddler's Green.

Marching past, straight through to hell,

The infantry are seen,

Accompanied by the Engineers,

Artillery and Marine,

For none but the shades of Cavalrymen

Dismount at Fiddlers' Green.

Though some go curving down the trail

To seek a warmer scene,

No trooper ever gets to Hell

Ere he's emptied his canteen,

And so rides back to drink again

With friends at Fiddlers' Green.

And so when man and horse go down

Beneath a saber keen,

Or in a roaring charge or fierce melee

You stop a bullet clean,

And the hostiles come to get your scalp,

Just empty your canteen,

And put your pistol to your head

And go to Fiddlers' Green.

In an ironic (and somewhat morbid) choice of names, "Fiddler's Green" was the name of an artillery Fire Support Base in Military Region III in Vietnam in 1972 occupied principally by elements of 2nd Sqdn., 11th Armored Cavalry.

Fiddler's Green in popular culture

In Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic books, Fiddler's Green is a location in the mystical landscape of the Dreaming. It once spent a few years as a human being, just for a change of pace, basing its appearance and personality on the writer G. K. Chesterton. (Fiddler's Green was also the name chosen for a convention that honored the Sandman comics in 2004).

In the George Romero film Land of the Dead, Fiddler's Green is a small section of a city, bordered on three sides by rivers, and fortified to protect its inhabitants from the zombies.

The song "Fiddler's Green" by The Tragically Hip.

The song "Fiddler on the Green" by Demons & Wizards

The Irish-Folk band "Fiddler's Green" from Germany.

There is a concert hall called Fiddler's Green in Denver Colorado.

Robert A. Heinlein had several novels that featured planets named "Fiddler's Green".

Fiddlers Green Paper models are a leading supplier of card models.

In George Romero's Land of the Dead, the affluent live in a condo building called "Fiddler's Green."

See also

• Big Rock Candy Mountain
• Cockaigne
• Paradise
• Valhalla
• Order of the Spur