Patriotic Songs

The Tumultuous Wedding of the Thistle and the Rose

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I could just quote the e-mail sent to me by the composer/arranger of “Thistle and Rose (with ‘Ye Bonnie Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon’),” Phyllis White, in answer to my inquiries about her thought processes as she wrote the piece, and you’d be quite well informed. I will indeed quote her later in this post. Have to say that it’s a total joy when I can communicate with living musicians as I’ve been able to do here. Let me first, though, unpack the symbolism of the thistle and the rose, which stand for Scotland and for England respectively. The story about the thistle comes from an incident in Scotland’s history:

It was 1263 when King Haakon’s fleet of battle-hardened Norsemen was blown off course and landed on the shores of Largs in Ayrshire. To their delight there was a sleeping Scottish army nearby. Not suspecting an attack, the Scottish were doomed to suffer an ambush. The Norsemen removed their boots in preparation for sneaking up on the slumbering soldiers. Fortunately, a field of thorny thistle flowers surrounded the Scottish. One Norse soldier, stepping on a thorn, yelled out in pain. This scream woke the Scottish men, who jumped into action and slaughtered the invading Norsemen.1

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Is There Actual History in the Song “With a Hundred Pipers”?

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Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Eldest son of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart. Painted by William Mosman around 1750; accessed via Wikipedia.

I’ve written about the history of conflict between England and Scotland in several other posts, but if you’re coming to this material without having read those a bit of background is in order. Scotland and England fought each other for centuries, but it looked as though things were settled in 1603, when Queen Elizabeth I died and left no children, naming the king of Scotland, her cousin James Stuart, as her heir. He became James I of England and in theory united the countries. (He is perhaps most famous for commissioning the King James Bible.)

Alas, relations between the two countries did not remain peaceful. A big bone of contention was religion, even though both countries were Protestant. Charles I, James’ son, riled the Scots by his determination to control Scottish church government. England was also determined not to go back to the Roman Catholic church. In 1688 James II, who was James I’s grandson, was kicked off the throne over this very issue. He had converted to Roman Catholicism before becoming king, and his second wife was French and Catholic.  But his first wife had been Protestant and English and his two daughters from that marriage had been raised Anglican. So the English kept their fingers crossed that he wouldn’t have any sons from this second wife. A male heir would automatically take his place at the front of the succession line, but James was 51 when he became king and his wife had a long history of miscarriages and stillbirths. So what could possibly go wrong? Well, as it turned out, a lot. James’ wife did indeed finally produce a surviving son, and a Catholic dynasty seemed in the offing. England rose up against him and offered the throne to Mary of Orange, the eldest daughter of James’ first marriage, and her husband William. (“Orange” is a region in The Netherlands.)

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Three Men, Three Countries, One Masterpiece—“Homeland”

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National Guard troops guarding the US Capitol building, Jan. 13, 2021, accessed via bbc.com.

Do you want to know my clearest memory of this piece? My choir had scheduled it for a March 2013 concert; when we sang it through for the first time at rehearsal I suddenly realized that the woman who sat next to me was crying. The words had hit her like a ton of bricks—her fiancé had been killed in Vietnam, she said. And indeed the words are very emotional, even more so when you know their history.

The first of the three men associated with this piece was Cecil Spring Rice, a British diplomat who served as ambassador to the US starting in 1912 and who wrote a poem named “Urbs Dei”

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How Much Verbiage Can Possibly Be Lavished on the History and Meaning of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”?

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Answer: a lot. Like, a whole lot. The following isn’t at all definitive, but it should give you a sense of the historical milieu from which the song came.

I think all of us have a vague idea that “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” has something to do with the Civil War, and you may or may not be aware that its tune is the same as “John Brown’s Body.” a popular song among Union soldiers that they had adapted from an old Methodist revival song, “Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us.” Wikipedia says this about the origin of the words, taken from an account by a soldier::

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What’s Everybody So Glad About in “I Was Glad”?

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If you had been around in 1902 and invited to the coronation of Queen Victoria’s son Edward VII (“Bertie” to his friends), you would have heard the premier performance of Sir Hubert Parry’s setting of Psalm 122 from the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, always known by its opening words: “I Was Glad.”

Psalm 122 in the Jewish Bible is one of a group of Psalms (songs) usually called “Psalms of ascent.” Scholars disagree on what exactly the word “ascent” refers, but the idea that’s usually listed first is that these psalms were sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to participate in various festivals in the Jewish calendar. Jerusalem is built on several hills (one of which had the name “Zion,” sometimes used to refer to Jerusalem as a whole), so you would indeed be ascending as you made your approach into the city.

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Does “This Land Is Your Land” Belong to You and Me?

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photo credit Wikipedia; note the sign on Guthrie’s guitar: “This machine kills fascists.”

Maybe! The song may have been in the public domain since 1973. It’s one of those interesting but meandering stories that’s hard to untangle. The short version is that Woody Guthrie wrote the song in 1940 but didn’t copyright it until 1945. That original copyright was never renewed and so therefore would have expired 28 years later. But in 1956 Ludlow Music, which seems to have been Guthrie’s publisher, filed for its own copyright and apparently did keep it up to date. Why two simultaneous copyrights were allowed isn’t clear. So earlier this year the same law firm that successfully sued to get “Happy Birthday” put in the public domain tried to do the same with “This Land.” (You missed that breaking news about “Happy Birthday”? Tsk, tsk!) If the suit is successful, one requirement will be the refunding of all licensing fees paid since 2010.

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How Is the Song “Men of Harlech” Connected to 9/11?

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First a little background on the song itself. Harlech Castle was built in northern Wales by Edward I of England in the late 1200’s after he put down a Welsh rebellion against his rule. Harlech then became embroiled in the Wars of the Roses that raged between the houses of Lancaster and York in the 1400’s. From 1461 to 1468 the Lancastrians managed to hold onto the castle even as other strongholds fell to the Yorkists. Edward IV finally got fed up and ordered a huge army to besiege the castle, which surrendered after a month. This siege is often described as lasting for seven years, which is, we will charitably say, a slight exaggeration. The song originates from these events, but there are several versions and none of them was written before the 1800’s. It’s interesting to note that this stirring paean to freedom and bravery is actually about a civil war. One version includes the words “Now the Saxon flees before us . . . Britain wins the field!” So the Yorkists were seen as equivalent to the Saxon invaders of centuries before, but it’s fair to point out that the Lancastrians were being helped out by the French. Hmmm. Anyway, howe’er it was, the song itself is stirring and dramatic, and it’s very popular as a regimental march and is used in an adapted form by several Welsh football (er, rugby) teams.

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