Folks:

To amplify what Bob has written:

In his book _Where Have All the Flowers Gone_ (New York: Sing Out, 1993),
p. 166, Seeger writes:

"In October 1955 I was sitting in a plane bound for Ohio to sing for the
students at Oberlin College.  Half dozing.  Found in my pocket three lines
copied a year before when reading (in translation) _And Quiet Flows the
Don,_ the Soviet novel by Mikhail Sholokhov.  He describes the Cossak
soldiers singing as they galloped off to join the Tsar's army.

"Where are the flowers.  The girls have plucked them.
Where are the girls?  They've taken husbands.
Where are the men?  They're all in the army."

In Seeger's original three-stanza version, it is NOT a circular song.  As
he explains it, Joe Hickerson, late of the Archive of American Folk
Culture and then the leader of the Oberlin Folk Song Club, added the two
verses that bring the song in circular fashion almost to the beginning:

Where have all the soldiers gone/Long time passing.
Where have all the soldiers gone/Long time ago.
Where have all the soldiers gone/Gone to graveyards, every one.
When will they ever learn? (2)

Where have all the graveyards gone, etc.
Covered with flowers everyone.

Incidentally, this is one of the few composed songs of the folk revival
that seems to have undergone a folk-like transformation, with not only
Hickerson's changes, but tune changes made by the trio fo Peter, Paul and
Mary.  Seeger seems delighted.

Ed


On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Robert B. Waltz wrote:

> On 8/7/02, Bill McCarthy wrote:
>
> [ ... ]
>
>
> >(A parallel:  Where have All the Flowers Gone is a song that goes in a
> >perfect circle.  It is not necessarily based on some other song, of which
> >there are many, such as  My Name is Jon Jonson,  that goes in a perfect
> >circle .)
>
> Minor point: "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" *is* derived from
> another such song. Pete Seeger explained that he found an item
> quoted in (I believe) _And Quiet Flows the Don_ which gave him
> the idea for the English-language song.
>
> --
> Bob Waltz
> [log in to unmask]
>
> "The one thing we learn from history --
>    is that no one ever learns from history."
>
>