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Latest revision as of 19:03, 12 January 2025

According to Blue Ridge Mountain local history the tune was known in the Civil War era. Geoffrey Cantrell, writing in the Asheville Citizen-Times of Feb., 23, 2000 relates the story of the execution of three men by the Confederate Home Guard on April 10th, 1865, the day after Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.

That news would not have been known to them, given the difficulty with communications at that time. It is documented that Henry Grooms, his brother George and his brother-in-law Mitchell Caldwell, all of north Haywood County, North Carolina, were taken prisoner by the Guard under the command of one Captain Albert Teague-no one knows why, but the area had been ravaged by scalawags and bushwackers, and the populace had suffered numerous raids of family farms by Union troops hunting provisions.

One theory is that the men were accused of being Confederate deserters who, perhaps knowing the war was nearly over, had aided the Union cause in some way. There was much back-and-forth guerilla warfare, however, and the village of Waynesville had been burned two months earlier (by Unionists), and the citizenry was beleaguered and anxious. Caldwell and the Grooms brothers were captured in the Big Creek section of Haywood County, close to the Tennessee border.

Cantrell writes: "The group traveled toward Cataloochee Valley and Henry Grooms, clutching his fiddle and bow, was asked by his captors to play a tune. Realizing he was performing for his own firing squad Grooms struck up Bonaparte's Retreat," his favorite tune.

When he finished the three men were lined up against an oak tree and shot, the bodies left where they fell. Henry's wife gathered the bodies and buried them in a single grave in the family plot at Sutton Cemetery No. 1 in the Mount Sterling community, the plain headstone reading only "Murdered."

The original source for the story is George A. Miller, in his book Cemeteries and Family Graveyards in Haywood County, N.C.

...more at: Bonaparte's Retreat - full Score(s) and Annotations

X:1 T:Bonaparte's Retreat [1] M:C L:1/8 Q:"Andante" N:DDAd tuning N:Drone strings throughout. B:Ford - Traditional Music in America (1940) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:D % V:1 clef=treble name="0." [V:1] [G,2D2] [G,D]F [D2A2]F2|(ED) (EF) (GF) (EF)|[G,2D2][G,D]F [D2A2]F2|(ED) (EF) [G,3D3]:| "accelerando"(3A/B/c/|d2 d>f d2 (3A/B/c/|(dB) (AG) (FD) (3A/B/c/|d2 d>f d[D2A2]|(FD) (EF) (GF) (EF)| [G,D][G,D]F [D2A2]F2|(ED) (EF) (GF) (EF)|[G,2D2][G,D]F [D2A2]F2|(ED) (EF) [G,3D3]z2|| (3A/B/c/|[G,2D2]d>"poco"f d2 (3A/B/c/|[G,D]>B (AG) (FD) "poco"(3A/B/c/|[G,2D2]|d>f d2A2|(F>D) (EF) (GF) (EF)| [G,2D2][GD]F [D2A2]F2|"Piu moto"(ED) (EF) (GF) (EF)|[G,2D2] {G,D]F [D2A2]F2|(ED) (EF) [G,4D4]|"Coda"[A8e8]|| M:2/4 L:1/8 "Allegro"(g/e/g/e/ bg|g/e/f/g/ a/g/f)|(g/e/g/e/ bg|1 f/e/f/g/ [A2e2]):| |2f/e/f/g/ [Ae](3A/B/c/||"Allegretto"d2 d>f d2 (3A/B/c/|(dB) (AG) (FD) (3A/B/c/|d2 d>f d2A2|(FD) (EF) (GF) (EF)|

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 {{SheetMusic
-|f_track=Jenny Nettles.mp3
+|f_track=GroomsTune.mp3
-|f_pdf=Jenny Nettles.pdf
+|f_pdf=Bonaparte Retreat.pdf
-|f_artwork=Lovers Knot.jpg
+|f_artwork=GroomsPension.jpg
-|f_tune_name=Jenny Nettles
+|f_tune_name=Bonaparte's Retreat
-|f_track_title=Jenny_Nettles_(1)
+|f_track_title=Bonaparte's Retreat_(1)
 |f_section=abc
-|f_played_by=[https://soundcloud.com/user-75630746-880803498 Jonathan Taylor]
+|f_played_by=[https://soundcloud.com/dollyparton Dolly Parton]
-|f_notes= She placed her hand into her bag and pulled out the Lover’s knot.
+|f_notes=To this day, North Carolina mountain fiddlers will refer to Bonaparte's Retreat as "Grooms' Tune".
-|f_caption=Allegedly, as her fame grew through the popularity of the song, her grave was pillaged for keepsakes of the ill fated young woman. Her skull and bones were found barely beneath the surface as two gold earrings and twenty four beads were taken from her grave. The goods were taken to Edinburgh jeweller Mr Fraser of St Andrew’s street.
+|f_caption=The last card in his file is from 1893. His widow was probably years obtaining a widow's pension. She had to have "deserted" cleared from his record. A notation on that last card says :{{break|2}}
-|f_source=[https://soundcloud.com/user-75630746-880803498/jenny-nettles Soundcloud]
+"''The charge of desertion against this man has been removed. It has been determined from evidence presented, that he was killed by the enemy, April 22, 1864, while absent on recruiting service in Haywood County, NC''".
+|f_source=[https://soundcloud.com/dollyparton/grooms-tune-bonapartes-retreat Soundcloud]
 |f_pix=420
 |f_picpix=200
-|f_article=[[Jenny_Nettles_(1) | '''Jenny Nettles''']]
+|f_article=[[Bonaparte's Retreat_(1) | '''Bonaparte's Retreat''']]
-Jenny Nettles was a comely and fetching maiden of the village of Strathmiglo, who fell deeply in love with a Highland Officer attached to the command of the Rob Roy. The famous outlaw chief had invaded the countryside for a time but was forced to retreat to the mountains for safety, and when the clansmen marched off Jenny was deserted by her lover. In bitterness and pain from her lost love, Jenny hung herself by a roadside tree. As a suicide, Jenny Nettles could not be buried in hallowed ground, nor could a coffin be fashioned for her eternal rest. She was buried in the middle of the night in an unmarked grave. Her final resting place is at a crossroads of two forest paths on the north side of the Lomond Hills in Fife, a few minutes' walk out of Strathmiglo. Local lore has it that Jennie's ghost wanders the muir on bright moonlit nights, looking for her lost Highland love. Jenny Nettles is also a nickname for the harmless and familiar "daddy longlegs" or cellar spider, for a stinging nettle, and, on the Isle of Man, for a jellyfish.
-Stenhouse [1] received the following anecdote from an Edinburgh jeweler, a Mr. Fraser of St. Andrew's Street, regarding some reputed relics of Jenny's that came into his possession:
+According to Blue Ridge Mountain local history the tune was known in the Civil War era. Geoffrey Cantrell, writing in the '''Asheville Citizen-Times''' of Feb., 23, 2000 relates the story of the execution of three men by the Confederate Home Guard on April 10th, 1865, the day after Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.
-Gold ear-ring and bead of a necklace which belonged to the famed Jenny Nettles of Scottish song, whom tradition mentions committed suicide, and was buried between two lairds' lands near the Lomond hills, a cairn or heap of stones being raised to mark the spot, according to ancient usage. A stranger, happening to visit a farmer in that neighbourhood, was accidentally informed of the above circumstance, and was shown the place where the cairn once stood. Prompted by the love of antiquarian research, he immediately commenced digging, when, at the depth of eighteen inches, he found the skull and other bones of poor Jenny (which must have remained inhumed at least a century), along with two ear-rings and twenty-four beads. One of the ear-rings was given to a gentleman who went to France, and twenty-three of the beads were distributed among various persons. 1830.--(C.K.S.) .... (C.K.S. are the initials of Stenhouse's contemporary, Scottish antiquarian and artist Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, 1781-1851).
+That news would not have been known to them, given the difficulty with communications at that time. It is documented that Henry Grooms, his brother George and his brother-in-law Mitchell Caldwell, all of north Haywood County, North Carolina, were taken prisoner by the Guard under the command of one Captain Albert Teague-no one knows why, but the area had been ravaged by scalawags and bushwackers, and the populace had suffered numerous raids of family farms by Union troops hunting provisions.
+One theory is that the men were accused of being Confederate deserters who, perhaps knowing the war was nearly over, had aided the Union cause in some way. There was much back-and-forth guerilla warfare, however, and the village of Waynesville had been burned two months earlier (by Unionists), and the citizenry was beleaguered and anxious. Caldwell and the Grooms brothers were captured in the Big Creek section of Haywood County, close to the Tennessee border.
+Cantrell writes: "The group traveled toward Cataloochee Valley and Henry Grooms, clutching his fiddle and bow, was asked by his captors to play a tune. Realizing he was performing for his own firing squad Grooms struck up Bonaparte's Retreat," his favorite tune.
+When he finished the three men were lined up against an oak tree and shot, the bodies left where they fell. Henry's wife gathered the bodies and buried them in a single grave in the family plot at Sutton Cemetery No. 1 in the Mount Sterling community, the plain headstone reading only "Murdered."
+The original source for the story is George A. Miller, in his book '''Cemeteries and Family Graveyards in Haywood County, N.C.'''
 }}