Redwing – Fiddle Tune a Day – Day 20

I have always thought Redwing was a fun tune. It’s one of those songs where the words are a stark contrast to the melody. The tune is happy, and catchy, and sounds like it would be talking about love, and flowers, or maybe dancing. The words talk about love, but not in a happy way. They talk about love lost and an Indian brave who didn’t return home to Redwing. Maybe that contrast is one of the reasons that this song has had such staying power.

Get Sheet Music to Redwing

Learn to play Redwing on fiddle here

The History of Red Wing according to Wikipedia

“Red Wing” is a popular song written in 1907 with music by Kerry Mills and lyrics by Thurland Chattaway. Mills adapted the music from Robert Schumann’s composition for piano “The Happy Farmer, Returning From Work” from his 1848 work Album for the Young, Opus 68. The song tells of a young Indian maid’s loss of her sweetheart who has died in battle. It is most memorable for its chorus:
Now the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing,
The breeze is sighing, the night bird’s crying,
For afar ‘neath his star her brave is sleeping,[N 1]
While Red Wing’s weeping her heart away.[1]
^ in later versions usually: “For a far far away her brave is dying”

The song has been recorded numerous time in many different styles.[citation needed] It was parodied, in a version perpetuated among British schoolchildren, which begins with the line, “The moon’s shining down on Charlie Chaplin.” (See Iona and Peter Opie’s The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren.) The original version was sung by John Wayne and Lee Marvin in the 1961 film The Comancheros. In 1950 Oscar Brand recorded a bawdy version in his Bawdy Songs & Backroom Ballads, Volume 3.

Redwing Lyrics

There once was an Indian maid,

A shy little prairie maid,

Who sang a lay, a love song gay,

As on the plain she’d while away the day;

She loved a warrior bold,

This shy little maid of old,

But brave and gay, he rode one day

To battle far away.

Now, the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing

The breeze is sighing, the night bird’s crying,

For afar ‘neath his star her brave is sleeping,

While Red Wimg’s weeping her heart away.

She watched for him day and night,

She kept all the campfires bright,

And under the sky, each night she would lie,

And dream about his coming by and by;

But when all the braves returned,

The heart of Red Wing yearned,

For far, far away, her warrior gay,

Fell bravely in the fray.