"The Cruel War is Raging", also known as "The Girl Volunteer", is probably an American lyric song. Collectors debate about the war to which this song originally referred. It is certainly related to the Revolutionary War song (1700s) "Jack Monroe" ("Jackaroe") and may be a Civil War variant. Whenever it developed, it is a perfect example of a "warrior woman" song. Most of these are narrative ballads but this is a lyric song with no described action. Dianne Dugaw in Warrior Women and Popular Balladry says, "The [first warrior woman ballads" I came to know were Polly Oliver and The Cruel War, . . . intrigued by the cross-dressing soldier girl heroine of these Ozark ballads, I betook myself to libraries and archives to find out more about her. In 1941 Mrs. Carrie Grover of Nova Scotia sang several Female Warrior ballads for the collector, Alan Lomax. Asked if she ever had “daydreams” of being such a woman soldier, Mrs. Grover replied:
I sure did. I had daydreams about a good many of these songs . . . I imagine things like this happened in the days gone by. . .but now they’ve got laws, so they couldn’t get by with it".
Other examples of this genre in this collection are "Jackaroe" and "The Handsome Cabin Boy". The verses given here are from several sources. The verses from Peter, Paul & Mary's version have probably been reworked for them.
It has been recorded by Bethany Yarrow, Peter, Paul & Mary, Roger McGuinn and Peggy Seeger. It appears as #401 in the Roud Folk Song Index. I has been printed in Laws' American Balladry from British Broadsides, Brown's Collection of North Carolina Folklore (1952), Silverman's Folk Song Encyclopedia (1975), Silber's Folksinger’s Wordbook (1973), Blood and Patterson's Rise Up and Sing!: The Group Singing Songbook (1988), Sharp's English Folk-Songs from the Southern Appalachians (1917) and Peggy Seeger's Folk Songs of Peggy Seeger (1964).