War Songs

This is a genre defined soley by theme. Songs whose subject matter concerns battles also appear in the milling song genre. They are defined as milling songs only because of their frequent performance at milling frolics. A number of the songs in this collection date to the Napoleonic wars. Many highland youths became soldiers for the British forces when following the Battle of Culloden in 1745. Unlike war songs composed in the 17th and early 18th centuries which concern clan feuds and civil battles, songs composed during the Napoleonic period express the dissatisfaction of soldiers with the alien cause for which they were fighting.

These following War Songs were collected by MacEdward Leach in Cape Breton in 1949: