Thursday, October 6, 2016

1930s video of old Confederate veterans doing the "Rebel Yell"

Rick emails to point to this.  It's pretty cool looking back 150 years.

3 comments:

Bob said...

Some of the old fellows seemed to be playing to the cameras rather than trying to produce the real Yell, but some of them got it correct (although one old fellow had to stop when his dentures nearly fell out).

The real Yell, so far as I have been able to determine, was the "Hoooooeeee! yell that some of them were screaming. Sam Watkins, who was a member of the Army of Tennessee and wrote one of the definitive memoirs of the War, wrote the Yell out phonetically in a section of his book in which a bull runs through the AOT camp - - and it was "hooeee!"

It is possible that there were some variations of the Yell between the different regional Confederate armies at the beginning, but probably as time went on the "Hoooeee!" version became dominant.

I keep it in the back of my mind, and practice it on occasion. If the nation goes to Hell and riots turn into all out race war, a last scream of defiance might be necessary if the ammo runs out and the luck goes bad.

selsey.steve said...

Never mind the yells, those old timers were good men.

Chickenmom said...

God bless 'em! Maybe we need to hear it once again.