> Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
> May by thy mighty aid,
> Victory bring.
> May he sedition hush,
> and like a torrent rush,
> Rebellious Scots to crush,
> God save the King.
So that's nice, when your own national anthem called for you to be crushed. This verse is not used anymore, but the UK national anthem is obviously not popular in Scotland. I have never learned the lyrics to it and haven't the faintest interest in doing so. For me it starts "God save our something Queen, bleeh bleh bleh bleeeeeeh bleh bleh, god save our queen..."
I know "Kde domov můj" more than I know that song.
https://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/pdf/ssb_lyrics.p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the_Queen#Historic_Ja...
Did you read this on Twitter or in The National?
It’s not calling for loyal Scots to be crushed, just rebellious ones!
Someone anticipated the Scottish independence referendum already a long time ago!
But in honesty, the anthem isn't technically prejudiced against the Scottish identity today, it's just sort of ... weird due to this history and some accumulated shit, and many of us just fucking don't like it, but can't really do anything about it.
Flower of Scotland is very slow and brings an odd vibe to sporting events. I prefer Loch Lomond and how it builds :D
edit - you got downvoted: you shouldn't have
La Marseillaise, if you boil it down to a single sentence, is basically "Fight on, Frenchmen... because we are utterly screwed if you don't."--almost all of the violence in the song is about the violence directed towards the French by the various coalitions arrayed against it at that time. (Also extremely notable for a national anthem of that period, it never specifically identifies an enemy--contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem.)
Yes, OTOH it seems to have a mere passive, defensive spirit: “a guardian of the river” – “the watch on the Rhine” – “protects the sacred border of the land” – “remain”,[1] written afraid of annexation:
“Repeated French efforts to annex the Left Bank of the Rhine began with the devastating wars of King Louis XIV. French forces carried out massive scorched earth campaigns in the German south-west. This policy was fully implemented during the Napoleonic Wars with the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806–1813. In the two centuries from the Thirty Years' War to the final defeat of Napoleon I, the German inhabitants of lands by the Rhine suffered from repeated French invasions.
The defeat and exile of Napoleon gave the Germans some respite, but during the Rhine Crisis of 1840, French prime minister Adolphe Thiers advanced the claim that the Upper and Middle Rhine River should serve as his country's "natural eastern border". The member states of the German Confederation feared that France was resuming her annexationist designs.”[2]
Maybe itʼs even meant as a signal of dishonesty that it is sung by soldiers whose army didnʼt watch at the Rhine but occupied France brutally? Anyway, I donʼt intend to praise the Wacht am Rhein, itʼs certainly not great poetry, rather a rattling and clattering from the dustbin of history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Wacht_am_Rhein#Lyrics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Wacht_am_Rhein#Origin
I’m not extremely deeply familiar with the history and consequences of the French Revolution, but I recall that it was the French who started the War of the First Coalition.
As an ironic aside, it looks like the fellow who commissioned La Marseillaise lost his head to the Reign of Terror.
> contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem
Die Wacht am Rhein? The lyrics on Wikipedia don’t mention the French at all so far as I can tell. They claim that ‘Frenchman’ is a literal translation of ‘Welscher,’ but I think the literal translation is ‘foreigner.’
> Son giunchi che piegano (Mercenary swords)
> le spade vendute (they're feeble reeds)
> già l'Aquila d'Austria (The Austrian eagle)
> le penne ha perdute. (Has already lost its plumes)
> Il sangue d'Italia, (The blood of Italy)
> il sangue Polacco, (and the Polish blood)
> bevé, col cosacco, (It drank, along with the Cossack)
> ma il cor le bruciò (But it burned its heart)
... this is actually reciprocated in the Polish anthem:
> Marsz, marsz, Dąbrowski, (March, march, Dąbrowski)
> Z ziemi włoskiej do Polski. (From the Italian land to Poland)
> Za twoim przewodem (Under your command)
> Złączym się z narodem. (We shall rejoin the nation)
Nobility was calling them impure (since not from noble blood), and they reversed it to something to be proud of (kind of).
Here's a translation from Wikipedia:
"Let an impure blood
Water our furrows!
What does this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiring kings want?
For whom have these vile chains
These irons, been long prepared? (repeated)
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What furious action it must arouse!
It is for us they dare plan
A return to the old slavery!
What! Foreign cohorts!
Would make the law in our homes!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
…(later)
Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare those sorry victims,
For regretfully arming against us (repeated)"
Okay so Frenchmen are magnaminous, valorous warriors. The enemy are the slaves of tyrants. And we're meant to believe the impure blood in a song written by a French revolutionary era freemason refers to the third estate? Seems unlikely to me.
Damn ! it looks like you're right. I fell for this fake interpretation that got spread for the last 10 years on the net, and even reached wikipedia...
Sorry about that.
edit : it's even worst than that, that alternate theory reached the ministry of education and the parlement, since 2006...
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/rouget-de-marseille/blog/130718/l...
Looks like we're having a lot of trouble with the original super barbaric lyrics :)))
But since nationalism was widespread and encouraged in that zeitgeist, and considering the context of a foreign invasion in which the lyrics were written, I am way more inclined to assume that the "impure blood" is that of the "ferocious soldiers" coming for the French.
This is a question that is sometimes very much discussed in France. Always in French : https://www.uneautremarseillaisepourlafrance.fr/blog/2015/12...
Sorry about that.
Did the nobility in any country use to consider the blood of the people they ruled "impure"? Lowborn, sure, but "impure"?
Well, when the Marseillaise was written, they were about to kill the king, forgo any reference to God and were watering fields with the blood of their enemies (and French soldiers), so it was appropriate, no?
They were at war with half of Europe though, and directly threatened by the Austrian army, amongst others.
Modern billionaires could probably do with some history lessons.
To be fair to old Louis though, he did learn from the English civil war: he read Hume’s History of England and was well aware of how Charles I got killed. He tried very hard not to be as inflexible. So instead he got killed for going with the wind and saying yes too often, to the wrong people. And trying to flee, which was really un-patriotic, completely sank the legitimacy of the constitutional monarchy, and opened the door for the radicals.
The then very recent constitutional monarchy fell in August.
The king trial began in November and even then, although death was requested by some, it was not an evidence yet.
Death was voted with a small majority in January.
(/s -- victim of its own success...)
This was long before German unification and the head-on rivalry it created.
What I don't think I ever realized is that the film is from 1942. Pretty much every WWII film is from long after the war ended, but this was released early in the France occupation. That adds so much to its meaning and power.