Virginia's Bloody Soil: A Song History

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“Virginia’s Bloody Soil” is a ballad of the American Civil War. The Minerva Historical Society in upstate New York connects the song with the story of Captain Dennis Barnes and notes that Tennessee Ernie Ford performed it.[1] Beyond that connection, the sources consulted here do not establish who wrote the ballad or when.

1862 photograph of the ruins of a house on the open, splintered ground of the Bull Run battlefield in Virginia

George N. Barnard, ruins of Mrs. Judith Henry’s house on the Bull Run battlefield, Virginia, photograph, March 1862. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

The singer Frank Warner recorded a fragment of it for the Library of Congress Recording Laboratory in Washington on February 17, 1947.[2] It was printed in Alan Lomax’s The Folk Songs of North America (1960)[3] and in Irwin Silber’s Songs of the Civil War, first issued by Columbia University Press that same year, where it is grouped among songs of battles and campaigns.[4] Warner’s performance was also chosen for the 1964 anthology The Folk Box, reissued in 2014.[5]

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Sources

  1. Minerva Historical Society: "Captain Dennis Barnes".
  2. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center: "Virginia's bloody soil (fragment)".
  3. Internet Archive: "The Folk Songs of North America in the English Language" (Alan Lomax, 1960).
  4. Internet Archive: "Songs of the Civil War" (Irwin Silber, Dover reprint of the 1960 Columbia University Press edition).
  5. AllMusic: "The Folk Box [1964]".