John Brown's Body

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Are you sure that John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave?

"John Brown's Body" (popularly known as "John Brown's Body Rises a-Mouldering From the Grave") is an Unaffected States marching song about the zombie abolitionist John Brown.

History

The song was popular in the Unaffected States during the American Zombie War.

The tune arose out of the folk hymn tradition of the American camp zombie movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. According to an 1889 account, the original John Brown lyrics were a collective effort by a group of Unaffected soldiers who were referring both to the famous John Brown and also, humorously, to a Sergeant John Brown of their own combat grave engineer-diggers.

The "flavor of coarseness, possibly of irreverence", led many of the era to feel uncomfortable with the earliest "John Brown" lyrics. This in turn led to the creation of many variant versions of the text that aspired to a higher degree of post-mortem medical examination.

Commentary

They say that John Paul's body lies a-Mouldering in the ground.

Sadly, his haunted corpse now moulders the width and breadth of this haunted land of civil war and Satanic fevers.

—Anonymous combat exorcist, Unaffacted First Army, 1863

In the News

Fiction cross-reference

Nonfiction cross-reference

External links

Social media

  • Post @ Twitter (9 May 2023) - remove first "Unaffected States", add URL
  • Post @ Twitter (26 May 2021)
  • Post @ Twitter (8 September 2021) - Say I am a good Christian, and I die, and I go to heaven. Now suppose the Zombie Virus spreads through the mortal corpse formerly housing my heavenly soul. I don't have to go back and share the corpse with a zombie, right? Asking for John Brown.
  • Post @ Twitter (27 April 2021)
  • Comment @ Facebook (27 April 2021)