Battle Hymn

Our 5^th grade student teacher, Mr Robert S, has rolled a piano to the front of our classroom. This is highly unusual because our wonderful and beautiful music teacher, Miss Williams, is nowhere to be seen. Then Mrs B, our classroom teacher, takes up a post behind the music rack and begins to pound out (yes, pound) a vaguely familiar tune. Wait – people other than Miss Williams can play her piano?

It only takes us a moment to figure out the tune: “Glory, glory hallelujah, teacher hit me with a ruler, the dirty rat I hit her back, and her teeth came marching out!” Some of us are snickering, as quietly as we can. (Now, many decades later, I am not proud that I remember those particular lyrics.)

“STOP!” she commands. “You will now learn the proper words to this magnificent song.” Did she really say magnificent? Whatever the word was, it immediately silences us.

“The name of this song is the Battle Hymn of the Republic.” She teaches us the first verse amid much more piano-pounding. At the chorus, her head shoots up from behind the piano to make sure we aren’t singing the teeth-come-marching-out part. We become angelic.

Then comes the last verse. “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me.” Approximately two milliseconds pass before the entire male contingent of our 5^th grade class erupts. Because: bosom.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!?” Mrs B jumps up, bumping her own ample bosom on the piano. “You’re laughing because we must sing the word bosom? We ALL have a bosom.” She pronounces it “boozum.”

“I have a boozum.” Hand on chest, emphasizing each syllable. She points at Mr Robert S: “HE has a boozum!” She machine-gun points at all of us: “You ALL have boozums! Every one of you! And Christ had a boozum full of glory, as the song says!” Her face is screaming red and she keeps patting her own chest.

We don’t know precisely what a boozum is except that of course it has to do with boobs. But how could all the boys in class and Mr Robert S all have “a boozum?” It’s a revelation. We all surreptitiously look over at K and M because they are the only ones of us to have bras and we know bras have to do with actual boozums. I’m glad I don’t have a bra.

We try not to laugh. We look at the floor. We can’t wait for recess so we can race around the playground screaming “BOOZUMS!” at the top of our lungs.

Instead of moving on to another song or another topic entirely, Mrs B doubles down and makes us sing the Battle Hymn again and again. Each time we get to the beauty of the lilies, the rumbling begins and predictably explodes at the glory of his boozum. We cannot get through it and Mrs B finally slams the keyboard cover down and tells us that we are immature little terrible citizens and that we’d better grow up in a hurry. (I know it’s only the boys who are immature little terrible citizens.)

If I happen to hear the Battle Hymn anywhere this weekend during the semiquincentennial (I had to look it up) of our nation, I may sing the boozum line quietly to myself while thanking our founders and Julia Ward Howe. She was a poet, a staunch abolitionist and a suffragist who set her words to the tune of John Brown’s Body (music attributed to William Steffe). In 1862, our country was in the middle of the Civil War and a very dark time. Her intent and the song’s meaning endures.

I’m happy to cite The Kennedy Center for their wonderful explanation of the unofficial anthem of the Union. Battle Hymn of the Republic