The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[LeMartinPecheur]

Both Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory have been used as the English anthem in sporting events. I favour the former, preferable orchestrated by the the composer of the latter..

Well, Flanders & Swann went down this track many years ago. Their attempt at a national anthem for England alone entitled A Song of Patriotic Prejudice (chorus, to a suitably rousing original tune, "The English, the English, the English are best,/ I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest") would I believe do the job very nicely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vh-wEXvdW8

[ahinton]

Both Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory have been used as the English anthem in sporting events. I favour the former, preferable orchestrated by the the composer of the latter

But so what, at leat in terms of a NATIONAL anthem - i.e. one that would supposedly be for the use and benefit of citizens of the Unitged Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, not just those of England (including or excluding [though hopefully not] immigrants thereto), still less those who happen - when they choose to do so - to attend certain specific sporting events! All of those particularities would render the application and use of a so-called "National Anthem" ever more irrelevant on grounds of restriction. Why in any case would Jerusalem (a middle eastern city) and Land of Hope and Glory (where the hope might be doubtful and the glory even more so) be appropriate at such sporting events and why only at such events in any case? Who might be trying to prove or assert what in such circumstances by the use of such pieces? - in other words, what specific useful purpose would either piece serve - or reasonably be expected to serve - at a mere sporting event attended in all probability by less than 0.01% of the UK population, particularly when the very notion of a "national anthem" (again, if there really has to be one) would presumably be expected to embrace some kind of universality or at least general inclusivity (i.e. not just those who go to particular sporting events)?

[ahinton]

Well, Flanders & Swann went down this track many years ago. Their attempt at a national anthem for England alone entitled A Song of Patriotic Prejudice (chorus, to a suitably rousing original tune, "The English, the English, the English are best,/ I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest") would I believe do the job very nicely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vh-wEXvdW8

But an English national anthem would and could in any case have no clout unless England were already an independent country entitled to its own national anthem (assuming that the majority of its populace, immigrants and all, considered it appropriate to have one); in any case, what price "tuppence" (a bag?) when an independent England (were there ever to be one) would almost certainly be unable to sustain its own currency?

[french frank]

But an English national anthem would and could in any case have no clout unless England were already an independent country entitled to its own national anthem

The Welsh have Mae hen wlad fy nhadau which they sing at rugby matches. I'm not sure what the Scots and Irish sing but sports fans seem to like to have a bit of a sing. And this seems to be what 'anthem' now is most widely understood to mean among the younger generation.: a song that is well-known and everyone can join in with. Like Old Skool and Anthems, which I used to think meant school songs like Forty Years On When Afar and Asunder.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

God Save the Queen, Mae hen wlad fy nhadau and Flower of Scotland all have quite contentious lyrics in at least one verse. At least Jerusalem avoids that, though the text is based on a legend with no historic basis.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau [has] quite contentious lyrics in at least one verse.

Does it? "Mae hen iaith y Cymru mor fyw ag erioed" do you mean? Well, perhaps not "as ever", but "poetic licence" rather than "quite contentious", surely? (Especially if we're allowing the "legend with no historical basis" that you mention in the song with a title of a city over 2000 miles away from the country it "represents"!)

[Serial_Apologist]

Does it? "Mae hen iaith y Cymru mor fyw ag erioed" do you mean? Well, perhaps not "as ever", but "poetic licence" rather than "quite contentious", surely? (Especially if we're allowing the "legend with no historical basis" that you mention in the song with a title of a city over 2000 miles away from the country it "represents"!)

Jerusalem obviously symbolised an imaginary place (builded here) very different for Blake than the modern city, sadly, can ever represent the ideal of utopia he intended in its translocated imaginary place. And that, apart of course from anything else, rules it out, sadly, as a candidate for English national anthem.

[cloughie]

Both Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory have been used as the English anthem in sporting events. I favour the former, preferable orchestrated by the the composer of the latter..

Jerusalem - you must be joking - you want to hijack it from the WI?
You really want to build Jerusalem? You like the mess of the Middle East?
Great tune - but the words!
All the satanic mills that haven't been gentrified into apartments have been demolished by Blaster Bates or Fred Dibnah.
'I vow to thee my country' is the one - otherwise write a new one.
Alternatively you could big up the N/S divide with 'Hills of the North rejoice'

[Bryn]

With the massive, and growing, disparity between the remuneration of those that do the work, and those who live off their labours in this contry, how about the Chartist Ernest Jones's Song of the Wage-slave?

The land it is the landlord's,
The trader's is the sea,
The ore the usurer's coffer fills —
But what remains for me?
The engine whirls for master's craft;
The steel shines to defend,
With labor's arms, what labor raised,
For labor's foe to spend.
The camp, the pulpit, and the law
For rich men's sons are free;
Theirs, theirs the learning, art, and arms —
But what remains for me?
The coming hope, the future day,
When wrong to right shall bow,
And hearts that have the courage, man,
To make that future now .

I pay for all their learning,
I toil for all their ease;
They render back, in coin for coin,
Want, ignorance, disease:
Toil, toil — and then a cheerless home,
Where hungry passions cross;
Eternal gain to them that give
To me eternal loss!
The hour of leisured happiness
The rich alone may see;
The playful child, the smiling wife —
But what remains for me?
They render back, those rich men,
A pauper's niggard fee,
Mayhap a prison — then a grave,
And think they are quits with me;
But not a fond wife's heart that breaks,
A poor man's child that dies,
We score not on our hollow cheeks
And in our sunken eyes;
We read it there, where'er we meet,
And as the sun we see,
Each asks, " The rich have got the earth,
And what remains for me? "

We bear the wrong in silence,
We store it in our brain;
They think us dull, they think us dead,
But we shall rise again:
A trumpet through the lands will ring;
A heaving through the mass;
A trampling through their palaces
Until they break like glass:
We'll cease to weep by cherished graves,
From lonely homes we'll flee;
And still, as rolls our million march,
Its watchword brave shall be —
The coming hope, the future day,
When wrong to right shall bow,
And hearts that have the courage, man,
To make that future now.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Jerusalem obviously symbolised an imaginary place (builded here) very different for Blake than the modern city, sadly, can ever represent the ideal of utopia he intended in its translocated imaginary place. And that, apart of course from anything else, rules it out, sadly, as a candidate for English national anthem.

I got lost in the syntax a bit there, S_A: do you mean that, because most people nowadays live in the sort of cities that Blake detested, Jerusalem cannot be used as an English national anthem?

If so (and apologies if I've misunderstood) then I think we interpret the words differently. The first verse refers to a myth that Christ spent some time in England (IIRC, during his childhood/youth after the flight into Egypt) - which the verse questions (all those "And did .. "s) in the context of the exploitive emergent capitalist system of the Industrial Revolution which Blake witnessed. The second verse counters this with a declaration by the individual that s/he shall fight (physically ["my sword"] and intellectually ["mental strife", the "arrows of desire") against the dehumanizing results of the "Satanic Mills" - and not stop fighting, until collectively people make the country a place worth living in.

What I like about Jerusalem (for all its typically Blakean use of metaphor) is that it doesn't like most other such "anthems" (including the vile I vow to thee my country) smugly assume the "superiority" of the Nation - and, therefore, its "right" to dominate others - but the responsibility of citizenship: the collective necessity for its people not to allow the few to determine how the many are allowed to live.

So, if there is to be such an Anthem, (I'm more of an Internationale chap, messel'n) the words of Jerusalem are much better than most, and the tune isn't bad, either (but preferably not in the Elgar orchestration, where the Satanic Mills of the orchestra drown out the voices of the people singing - just a piano; or even Billy Bragg's arrangement/re-setting).

[antongould]

I'm with you ferney ....

[cloughie]

I'm with you ferney ....

I'm not!!!

Nice tune, wrong words.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... wrong words.

In what way?

[cloughie]

In what way?

see #6158

[antongould]

I'm not!!!

..

but you said Hartlepool would get promoted - what do you know about England?