Please.
Advance Australia Fair is an innocuous little ditty, with keywords like:
“rejoice”, “young”, “free”, “wealth”, “gifts”, “beauty”, “share” etc.
And right in the middle of the opening verse you want to drop “ready for battle”?
No. Just no.
Now I will readily concede that the OED has the formidable reputation befitting a country with centuries of bloody insurrection, civil war, invasion from the north and south and of course themselves invading practically every country on the globe.
But down here in this antipodean Elysian paradise we have our own definitive record of choice, the Macquarie Dictionary. And regarding the singular most prominent word in the national anthem the Macca Book of Words’ complete entry is:
As to being a rousing martial call to arms and past glories it’s barely one step up from our Oceanic neighbours the Kiwis where with 0% Army, 0% Navy and 0% Airforce may “God Defend New Zealand”.
I may have over emphasized the one definition, but the one clearly used here means “surrounded.” Did you not read the OED quote? I’ll repeat it:
“Our home is girt by sea” = “Our home is surrounded by sea.” Seems like a pretty good description.
As for the use of “girt” instead of 'girded," poets often use older forms in order to preserve the rhythm (especially important for song lyrics). Heck, the Star Spangled Banner uses “o’er.”
Before Rule, Britannia! and God Save The King, there was Britannia, Britons, strike home!
Dr Martha Vandrei, from the University of Exeter, who has uncovered details about the song and its use, said: “It would be certainly interesting to hear how audiences at this year’s Last Night of the Proms reacted to Britannia,Britons, strike home.
“Two hundred years ago it was a British anthem on a par with Rule, Britannia! and God save the Queen. But the sense of Britishness that the phrase encapsulated was beginning to lose its potency in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
“It represented an older Britain and didn’t seem to capture the country’s modern imperial identify.”
Britons, strike home was first used in a play about Boudica, and described how the Ancient British general, Caratach tried to rouse the army against the Romans, appealing to the Druids to sing and take up arms.
**> ** > The Chief Druid sings: Britons, strike home! / Revenge, revenge your Country’s wrong / Fight! Fight and record. Fight! / Fight and record yourselves in Druid’s Song / Fight! Fight and record. Fight! / Fight and record yourselves in Druid’s Song”.
Dr Vandrei said: “It’s possible the song’s references to Druids, timely when it was first performed because of a current interest in ancient British history, left later audiences cold. In a time of science and increasing secularism a song about Boudica and her pagan hordes may have seemed absurd.”
Henry Purcell wrote the song a few months before his untimely death in 1695 – making it fifty years older than Rule, Britannia! The song became popular in theatres and was performed publicly throughout Great Britain.
In fact I was wrong. They did replace “O Canada” with a statement about God, increasing that. But I seem to recall they did this in 1978 or 1979 before making it the official version. Funny some of the web histories of the anthem gloss over this, which I clearly remember.
C’est evident la version francaise est plus religieuse. D’autrefois il y avait deux forces puissantes en la societe quebecoise: l’eglise et le hockey sur glace. Mais cette espece d’anachronisme n’est pas inhabituelle ni grave. Ils s’en fous qu’il y avait un epopee des glorieux exploits, et aujourd’hui plusiers preferent de porter les croissants aux croix, je crois, leurs choix, peut-etre un peu bourgeois?
Things didn’t work out so well for that small number of freed slaves. Our “foes’ haughty host” weren’t exactly heroic rescuers, and Britain didn’t really get around to abolishing slavery until 1838, and then only through the government spending enormous amounts of money to compensate slave owners (the government didn’t finish paying off loans for the bailout until 2015.
In case anyone is wondering, the second through fourth verses of the Star-Spangled Banner might as well not exist, as they aren’t remembered or sung.
The Ankh-Morpork Civic Anthem makes reference to dragons and hippos, but is more famous for being written as most anthems are usually sung.
"When dragons belch and hippos flee My thoughts, Ankh-Morpork, are of thee Let others boast of martial dash For we have boldly fought with cash We own all your helmets, we own all your shoes We own all your generals - touch us and you’ll lose.
Morporkia! Morporkia! Morporkia owns the day! We can rule you wholesale Touch us and you’ll pay.
We bankrupt all invaders, we sell them souvenirs We ner ner ner ner ner, hner ner hner by the ears Er hner we ner ner ner ner ner Ner ner her ner ner ner hner the ner Er ner ner hner ner, nher hner ner ner (etc.) Ner hner ner, your gleaming swords We mortgaged to the hilt
Morporkia! Morporkia! Hner ner ner ner ner ner We can rule you wholesale Credit where it’s due."
You took poetic license, all hale to you.
I ignored it, as is my prerogative.
But we are both being selective.
You could have picked “confined” instead of “surrounded”, which given the convict heritage of the place puts a neat realpolitick twist of history to it.
I could have run the puritanical angle like say:
While we are young and free,
With hedonistic beaches,
Regrettably, we don’t swing.
Sorry - nope, don’t buy it. If they aren’t remembered or sung, then it should be changed. And the badness of the original should still be acknowledged no matter what.
and the following is just trying to downplay that they were offering freedom to American slaves and that even moreso that the American national anthem praises/glorifies the killing of those attempting to escape slavery - pure trying to draw attentions to the sins of others to make the sins of the United States (and glorification of those actions still officially part of our anthem) seem lesser
It’s not a national anthem but I always thought the US Air Force anthem was complete garbage.
> Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun;
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,
At ‘em now, Give 'em the gun! give em the gun!
Down we dive, spouting our flame from under,
Off with one helluva roar!
We live in fame or go down in flame. Hey!
Nothing'll stop the U.S. Air Force!
You can tell it was written in the 1950s, seems like it should be the opening song to some bad sci-fi show.
The line with knavish in it is Frustrate their knavish tricks. Now knavish seems like a somewhat archaic word, but it isn’t the original word there. The original line was:
Neither does the Israeli one. Mostly, it has yearning:
As long as in the heart within, The Jewish soul yearns, And toward the eastern edges, onward, An eye gazes toward Zion. Our hope is not yet lost, The hope that is two-thousand years old, To be a free nation in our land, The Land of Zion and Jerusalem.
Of course, it was written 70 years before independence, and adopted unofficially by the Zionist Movement 25 years later, long before anyone imagined violence would be involved.
Please can we put that old canard to its archaic rest. Whatever the original authors and performers did in 1745, in its more recent use as a national anthem, there is rarely more than one verse used. The only times you might hear a second verse it would be the Britten arrangement using the interestingly conditional
Thy choicest gifts in store
On him be pleased to pour.
May he defend our laws
And ever give us cause
To be sing with heart and voice
God save the King!
