In Flanders by Eugene Field

The blanks stand in for swear words that Field intentionally never spells out. The joke lies in their emptiness. You're encouraged to think of whatever profanity you find funniest or most shocking—which often brings more laughs than any specific word he could have picked. The poem revolves around the concept of terrible swearing, rather than any specific curse.

It originates from Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy (1759), where the line 'Our armies swore terribly in Flanders' became one of the most frequently quoted phrases of the 18th and 19th centuries. By the time Field was writing, it was a familiar cultural reference for extreme profanity, and his readers would have caught the reference right away.

Not exactly. Field isn't seriously addressing the horrors of war — he's cracking a joke about swearing. The military backdrop serves merely as a backdrop for the humor. The poem doesn't focus on violence, death, or suffering in any way.

Field worked as a newspaper columnist in Chicago, catering to a local audience. The joke at the end about dropping the city name is a playful nod — he flatters his readers by suggesting that Chicago is too respectable for such language, which is humorous considering that the city was known for its rough and rowdy reputation in the 1880s and 1890s.

Corporal Sanders seems to be a made-up character created for the poem. He acts as a humorous scapegoat — the soldier who allegedly kicked off the tradition of swearing in Flanders by griping about the locals' wooden shoes. His common name makes him sound believable, which adds to the humor.

'Dander' is an old, informal term for temper or anger—when someone says 'getting your dander up,' it means you're getting angry. Therefore, 'vented their danders' simply means they expressed their anger, in this instance through swearing. Field employs this mild, almost quaint language throughout the poem to create a contrast with the implied intensity of the swearing itself.

Each stanza adopts a ballad-like structure with alternating rhymes, finishing with a line that includes the word 'Flanders,' serving as a humorous refrain. While it isn't a rigidly defined form, it captures the essence of a broadside ballad — the sort of comic song that would have been sung or recited, aligning well with Field's newspaper humor style.

Field was incredibly popular during his lifetime, particularly for sentimental children's poems such as 'Wynken, Blynken, and Nod' and 'Little Boy Blue.' However, his reputation declined in the 20th century, partly because his sentimental style seemed outdated, and his comic journalism relied on specific cultural references that lost their impact over time. Nonetheless, poems like this one remain strong examples of 19th-century American newspaper humor.