Let the hurricane roar

It's funny how our minds work.

You start thinking about one thing (earthquakes) which leads to another (hurricanes) which leads to yet another (Laura Ingalls Wilder).

Obvious, right? I thought so. 

And just before Pa laid the fiddle in its box ... he played a gallant, challenging tune that brought them all to their feet, and they all sang lustily,

Then let the hurricane roar!
It will the sooner be o'er.
We'll weather the blast
And land at last
On Canaan's happy shore! 

The Long Winter, Chapter 13
"We'll Weather the Blast" 

"The Evergreen Shore" was written by William Hunter and set to music by William B. Bradbury and was first published in 1861. Bradbury also wrote the music to Sunday School standard "Jesus Loves Me"! 

Both Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane used a different fourth line of the chorus, "On Canaan's happy shore," instead of, "Safe on the evergreen shore," which may have been how the Ingalls family learned the song.

Wilder began writing about her Little House books after the deaths of Ma and Mary and the stock market crach of 1929. Published during her lifetime were:

• Little House in the Big Woods (1932)
• Farmer Boy (1933)
• Little House on the Prairie (1935)
• On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937)
• By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939)
• The Long Winter (1940)
• Little Town on the Prairie (1941)
• These Happy Golden Years (1943)

Lane used the first line, "Let the Hurricane Roar," as the title of a serialized story using the names of her grandparents as characters and family stories. (Apparently this caused some friction between Wilder and Lane since Wilder felt the family stories were hers to tell.) It was published in 1932 by the Saturday Evening Post and as a book in 1933.

Let the Hurricane Roar has since been renamed Young Pioneers and the names of Charles and Caroline changed to David and Molly. 

But I digress. Again.

For those on the East Coast who have endured the 2011 Virginia Earthquake and are preparing for Hurricane Irene, I encourage you to remember:

Then let the hurricane roar!
It will the sooner be o'er.
We'll weather the blast.