God Save Britain (God Save The Queen)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	God Save The Queen
Date:	14/10/01 (2175 review reads)
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“God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the Queen!”

Is there any National Anthem in the world today that is less representative of its nation and its people than ours? Whilst I cannot claim to have knowledge of every single national anthem in the world, “God Save the Queen” has to rank amongst the least representative and least appropriate out there.

As I already said in my earlier opinion on patriotism, I feel absolutely nothing when our National Anthem is played – nothing at all. How can anyone feel a sense of national pride through singing words of praise for The Queen? Even those of us who are royalists (and I don’t count myself amongst their ranks incidentally – I am very much for the establishment of a Republic), can we really feel proud of our country through singing an anthem that makes no mention of it, or of the people that inhabit it?

I can’t.

“God Save the Queen” (or king, depending on who is the currently reigning Monarch) isn’t even set to a unique piece of music. I think it’s quite widely accepted that both the words themselves and the music are of an anonymous origin – no fully credible proof of who wrote the song has ever been uncovered… probably the most credible claim is that Henry Carey, a singer and composer, wrote the song as he is said to have first performed it in 1740. The oldest print copy is in a songbook of 1743 to which Carey was a contributor. It has also been claimed that the song is based on a similar hymn sung at the court of Louis XIV of France, and that it was brought to Britain by the Stuart "Bonnie Prince Charlie" at the time of his invasion in 1745, although the earlier book featuring Carey’s contribution does something to disprove that claim.

It’s
also been claimed that versions of the song existed in Scotland before 1740, but I don’t know of any proof. The sentiments “God Save the King” had of course been used for centuries, so there are understandably many claims as to the origin of our National Anthem.

Regardless of where the song came from, it is not, as I said, completely unique as the musical score has been used for the National Anthem of other countries – “My Country ‘tis of Thee” (US National Anthem until the Congress there voted to adopt “The Star Spangled Banner” in 1931), the Swiss National Anthem, and National Anthem’s for:

Prussia
Denmark
Russia
And Liechtenstein.

Indeed, during the times of the old German Empire, the Prussian version was still being used as the unofficial national anthem. What everyone thinks of as the German national anthem, "Deutschland über Alles", had no official recognition until 1922. The version in Liechtenstein incidentally is still used to this day, to the best of my knowledge.

What really annoys me about “God Save the Queen” though is not the fact that it’s not set to a unique tune, nor is it the fact that it’s set to an incredibly boring tune, it’s just the fact that I feel it is more of a tribute to a monarch than it is a national song, or a patriotic song – hence the fact that it was adopted by so many other countries with modified lyrics.

The anthem that replaced “My Country ‘tis of Thee” in the United States, “The Star Spangled Banner” represents what a National Anthem should be to me because it expresses the values of the American Nation and of its people:

“Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'
er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh! say, does the star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

The last two lines in particular are what really make it such a great anthem in my eyes… it’s able to express those values of freedom and bravery whilst also achieving so many other things – acting as something of a rallying cry in times of crisis such as that currently faced by the states – and the whole verse (as there is actually more to the song than this, the quoted verse is as far as the song is usually sung – as is the case with our own National Anthem) assures the nation that whatever happens, it will come through it: “Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there”… in spite of all that was happening around it.

“The Star Spangled Banner” wasn’t written as a National Anthem – it was originally written as a patriotic song for soldiers during the American Revolution, and it is sung to the tune of an old drinking song (allegedly of English origin, ironically, titled “To Anacreon in Heaven”)

The song was actually originally titled “The Defence of Fort McHenry”, the lyrics recounting the events of the American defence of that fort from the British.

The reasons for its writing are fairly unimportant though – what is important is that it perfectly captures the spirit of a nation – something which our own National Anthem fails to do.

The French National Anthem is very similar in many respects to “The Star Spangled Banner”.

The Marseillaise may just be the greatest national anthem. It is certainly one of most stirring, but also one of the most sanguinary. It originated during the French
Revolution, but did not permanently become the anthem of France until 1879. A monarchist, Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, a captain stationed on the Rhine, who subsequently was nearly guillotined, ironically, composed it in 1792, before the overthrow of King Louis XVI. The song got its name when a unit from Marseilles entered Paris singing it later in the year. The popularity of the song led to its official adoption in 1795, but Napoleon I, the restored Kings, and Napoleon III then shunned it. Only the advent of the Third Republic led to its permanent status.

When you read the English translation, or the French original if you happen to be fluent in the language, you can see immediately that it’s a war song. It’s very bloody and savage in some of its imagery… but nevertheless, it has other things to say that are more representative of France than its talk of killing and bloodshed. I’ll quote the whole English translation, as you need to read all the lyrics to appreciate it:

“Let us go, children of the Fatherland
The day of glory has arrived.
Against us is tyranny,
The bloody flag is raised,
The bloody flag is raised.
Do you hear in the countryside
The roar of these savage soldiers
They come right into our arms
To slaughter your sons,
your companions.

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions,
March on, March on!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is we they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions,
March on, March on!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! T
hese mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would make themselves
The masters of destiny

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions,
March on, March on!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heroes
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions,
March on, March on!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your wounds
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these bloody despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions,
March on, March on!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields

We shall enter into the pit
When our elders will no longer be there
There we shall find their ashes
And the mark of their virtues
We are much less jealous to survive them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions,
March on, March on!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields

Sacred love of the fatherland
Guide and support our vengeful arms.
Liberty, beloved liberty,
Fight with your defenders;
Fight with your defenders.
Under our flags, so that victory
Will rush to your manly strains;
That your dying enemies
Should see your triumph and glory

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions,
March on, Mar
ch on!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields”

Very bloody and violent, as I said, but to me it says more about freedom and a desire to defend the realm and what it stands for than anything else.

I think I’ve proved my point already… but there are many other examples that I could use – “Deutschland über alles”, “Oh Canada”, etc. etc. All of these anthems talk of the values and ideals of the country they represent and of its people. How does “God Save the Queen” do that?

The answer is simply that it doesn’t.

Every other nation on the planet seems to have moved on and adopted an anthem for the people, well, apart from Liechtenstein that is ;-) We though seem to be resisting change as always.

So then, if we are to change our National Anthem, what should we use to replace the outdated and unrepresentative dronings of “God Save the Queen”?

My personal choice would be “Land of Hope and Glory” – a song that I have always regarded as Britain’s TRUE National Anthem – even the title sums up the spirit of our nation and of our people. Surely it’s a much better choice than a song written simply to offer praise to our Monarch?

“Land of Hope and Glory
Mother of the Free
How shall we extol thee
Who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider
Shall thy bounds be set
God, who made thee mighty
Make thee mightier yet...
God, who made thee mighty
Make thee mightier yet.”

I know that some people regard “Land of Hope and Glory” as also being old fashioned, boring, and the latest charge to be levelled against it – “jingoistic” – but to me it DOES represent us: “Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free”. That line says it all for me.

Perhaps it would be better to open it up to a national v
ote… perhaps we should have a completely new song written for the nation…

I don’t know. I feel that Britain has a whole host of great patriotic songs that would be much more appropriate as a National Anthem than “God Save the Queen”.

At the end of the day, the issue of which song we choose is less important than the sentiments that the chosen song expresses, and how it makes us all feel when we sing it.

If we can all feel the same tingles in our body and shivers down our spine when we sing our new National Anthem as the French feel when they sing “La Marseillaise”, then we will know that we have made the right choice.

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