Fiddler's Green is an after-life where there is perpetual, a fiddle that never stops playing, and dancers who never tire. In 19th-century Anglo maritime folklore, it was a kind of after-life for sailors who had served at least fifty years at sea.
In literature
Fiddler's Green appears in Frederick Marryat's novel The Dog Fiend; Or, Snarleyyow, published in 1856, as lyrics to a sailors' song:
At Fiddler’s Green, where seamen true When here they’ve done their duty The bowl of grog shall still renew And pledge to love and beauty.
Herman Melville describes a Fiddler's Green as a sailors' term for the place on land "providentially set apart for dance-houses, doxies, and tapsters" in his posthumous novella Billy Budd, Sailor, in 1924. Fiddler's Green is the title of a 1950 novel by Ernest K. Gann, about a fugitive criminal who works as a seaman after stowing away. The author Richard McKenna wrote a story, first published in 1967, entitled "Fiddler's Green", in which he considers the power of the mind to create a reality of its own choosing, especially when a number of people consent to it. The main characters in this story are also sailors, and have known of the legend of Fiddler's Green for many years. Fiddler's Green is an extrasolar colony mentioned in Robert A. Heinlein's novels The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and Friday. In Neil Gaiman's The Sandmancomic book series, Fiddler's Green is a place located inside of the Dreaming, a place that sailors have dreamed of for centuries. Fiddler's Green is also personified as a character as well as a location in the fictional world, the former largely based upon casual associations of G. K. Chesterton. From November 12 to 14, 2004, a comic book convention promoted as "Fiddler's Green, A Sandman Convention" was held at the Millennium Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Author Neil Gaiman and several Sandman series artists and others involved in the series' publication participated in the convention, with profits benefiting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. In George Romero's 2005 film Land of the Dead, the safe, upper-class high-rise condo building is called "Fiddler's Green."
In music
A song called "Fiddler's Green" or more often "Fo'c'sle Song", was written by John Conolly, a Lincolnshire songwriter. It has been recorded by Tim Hart and Maddy Prior for their album Folk Songs of Olde England Vol. 2, by The Dubliners for their album Plain and Simple, and by The Irish Rovers for their album Upon a Shamrock Shore: Songs of Ireland & the Irish. The American sailor band Schooner Fare credits the song for bringing together their band. The song is sung worldwide in nautical and Irish traditional circles, and is often mistakenly thought to be a traditional song.
"Fiddler's Green" is a song from the album Road Apples by Canadian rock group The Tragically Hip, written for lead singer Gord Downie's young nephew Charles Gillespie, who died before the album was released.
"Fiddler's Green" is a song from Marley's Ghost's album Four Spacious Guys.
Fiddler's Green is the title track and name of Tim O'Brien's Grammy Award-winning 2005 album.
Fiddler's Green is a German folk-rock band, formed in 1990.
"Fiddler on the Green" is a song by German-American power metal supergroup Demons & Wizards, from the self titled album released in 1999.
The Cavalrymen's Poem, also entitled "Fiddlers' Green" was published in the US Army's Cavalry Journal in 1923 and became associated with the 1st Cavalry Division.
Halfway down the trail to Hell in a shady meadow green, are the Souls of all dead troopers camped near a good old-time canteen, and this eternal resting place is known as Fiddlers' Green. Marching past, straight through to Hell, the Infantry are seen, accompanied by the Engineers, Artillery and Marine, for none but the shades of Cavalrymen dismount at Fiddlers' Green. Though some go curving down the trail to seek a warmer scene, no trooper ever gets to Hell ere he's emptied his canteen and so rides back to drink again with friends at Fiddlers' Green. And so when man and horse go down beneath a saber keen, or in a roaring charge fierce melee you stop a bullet clean, and the hostiles come to get your scalp, just empty your canteen and put your pistol to your head and go to Fiddlers' Green.
The name has had other military uses. Many places associated with the US military have been named Fiddler's Green:
