Gallants, attend, and hear a friend Trill forth harmonious ditty,

Strange things I'll tell, which late befell In Philadelphia city.

With these words Francis Hopkinson began his rollicking The Ballad of the Kegs, which caught the fancy of Revolutionary patriots immediately and will delight any modern reader whose imagination is stirred by those exciting times. The poem tells of one of the most colorful incidents of the War for Independence—a naval battle between the British ships anchored at Philadelphia and a rebel fleet of kegs, packed with gunpowder and sent bobbing down the Delaware to attack them.

Hopkinson's rowdy verses recount in mock-heroic style the comic disarray of the British troops and the bewilderment with which they confronted this strange new form of warfare. Sung to the tune of "Yankee Doodle," the ballad swept the colonies, and the part it played in heartening the rebels was far more important to the American cause than the slight damage inflicted by the valiant kegs.

This is American humor at its best— vigorous, satiric, high-spirited —written by a man who was also a statesman and musician of Revolutionary times. Paul Galdone chose the ballad as especially suited to a lighthearted approach to history, and his illustrations have caught its rousing spirit and the rich color of Colonial Philadelphia.

From the dust jacket