God Save The Queen

Watching the match with someone who grew up in South Africa (never fear, he was still supporting the right team) we were impressed when he joined in with the national anthem and even more impressed when he informed us that the South African national anthem actually contains five different languages: Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English, if you’re interested.

So if every country in the world has one (apart from Cyprus that is, which uses the same anthem as Greece) then there must be some gems out there just waiting to be discovered. However, before I even had the chance to take my fact hunt further afield, our very own ‘God Save The Queen’ yielded its fascinating secrets. In my humble opinion the best thing about the British national anthem is the second verse, (or at least another of the verses - there isn’t an official order) which we never get to hear; clearly we’re missing out though:

O Lord, our God, arise,

Scatter her enemies,

And make them fall.

Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks,

On Thee our hopes we fix,

God save us all

Suspect rhyming (enem-eyes?), ‘knavish tricks’, a bit of religious pleading – apparently back in the day the ‘difficult second verse’ could make or break a budding national anthem composer. Although, if we ever did have a national realisation about how bad the rest of it is, there’s nothing to stop it from just being changed as it’s never been officially adopted as the national anthem by an Act of Parliament or Royal Proclamation.

The alternatives though are truly terrifying. Take these blokes who are seamlessly combining the vocal talents of a small choir child with the less obvious talents of some of their mates down the pub. Their aim is to create an ‘English’ anthem, by the sounds of if specifically for international sporting events, because at the moment, of course, we sing the equivalent of the Union Jack.

A persuasive reason to stick with the one we’ve got is that we share it with… you’ll never guess… Lichtenstein. Don’t ask me why. They do change the lyrics to stuff about the Rhine, but if you’re having a bit of a slow morning I do recommend some singing; it induces the same sense of elation you felt when you sang the ‘alternative’ words to hymns in primary school (“Most highly flavoured gravy”).

So there we go, you might even be feeling a little patriotic by this point; luckily the Seventies will offer the perfect antidote:

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