I found this rather interesting and though you all might, too. Interesting history on God save The Queen.....katA song for Scotland If it is indeed time to ditch the world's oldest national anthem, what should we replace it with? asks Ian Bell 18/12/97
TRUST the Scots. Other na~ tions cannot wait to wrap their tonsils around God Save the Queen, or at least around its melody: we want something different. What was good enough for Germany, Denmark and the United States (My Country 'Tis of Thee) in the 19th century, far less scores of British colonies before and since, is insufficiently "inspirational" for us, at least according to the Scottish Arts Council.
Granted, those little-sung lines to do with confounding the Scots, their "politicks" and their "knavish tricks" might not be best calculated to rouse a Murrayfield crowd. Then again, given the competition in the anthems market, far less the faux folk horror that is Flower of Scotland, the relative success of God Save the Queen might be a point in its favour. If nothing else, it has endured since 1745.
If Scotland is serious about a new anthem of its own it might also wish to pay some attention to the sentiments of the song. Czechoslovakia's eventual division into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, for example, should not have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the old anthem of the Czech faction, Kde Domuv Muj. In English, that posed the somewhat baffling question: "Where is My Native Land?" The Slovaks preferred the altogether more mysterious Lightning Above the Mountains.
The Norwegians, too, did not seem to sure of themselves when they settled on Ja Vi Elsker Dette Landet (Yes, We Love This Country). Canada, for its part, tested the patience of music lovers and pressed its claim to be one of the world's least exciting countries with The Maple Leaf Forever.
The truth is, indeed, that there is perhaps only one great anthem in the world and the French are using it. True, its lyrics seem to encourage the practice of wading in blood, but as Paul Henreid demonstrated playing a musical resistant in the film Casablanca, La Marseillaise has "inspirational" in spades. An equivalent scene involving GSTQ - best associated in the minds of an older generation with a cue to flee from cinemas - is impossible to imagine.
But then, different nations demand different things from their anthems. Little countries want tunes to make them sound big; warlike countries want tunes to make them sound like winners. Fading nations like our own are fond of tunes which remind them of glories past. Those new on the scene - such as the communist states, in their beginning - want to sing of victories to come, of filthy capitalists crushed underfoot and free tractors for all.
GSTQ has several curious ironies attached to it, in any case. Popularised amid the wave of relief that followed Charles Stuart's failure to proceed beyond Derby in the '45, its melody has been traced to a Scottish carol (Remember, O thou man) and its lyrics attributed to a Scotsman, James Oswald, who settled in London in 1742 and worked for the publisher of the early copies of the anthem.
Plainly, given his willingness to throw in a few anti-Caledonian sentiments, Oswald was the original model for J M Barrie's Scotsman on the make. For all that, early versions of the song were actually sung by Stuart supporters.
Nevertheless, as Linda Colley recounts in her study Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, it was Britain that gave the world the word "anthem" by dint of GSTQ and hence the idea of a state-approved song around which a country could rally in times of crisis or triumph. The purpose of GSTQ, indeed, was to reassert faith in Britain's identity as a Protestant country at a time when that was under grave threat.
Charles Stuart had almost pulled it off, after all, and largely through the incompetence of the British state itself. Despite that, God had indeed sent George II victorious and when the anthem was sung for the first time - in a London theatre in September, 1745 - it is said that those present received it "rapturously".
So the song's career as the original ambiguous message began. For many non-Britons it has long been a hymn to British arrogance and imperialism. Some Scots have never accepted it; the Irish long despised it. As royal houses began to follow the dinosaurs of the face of the earth, GSTQ's apparent obsession with the person of the monarch struck more than one observer as a shade peculiar. The anthem, by that account, summed up British deference and the British class system.
Hence, perhaps, the bizarre habit of playing it at the conclusion of an evening's television broadcasting. What was the thinking? That a nation of couch potatoes could retire to their beds secure in the knowledge that the Royal House survived while His/Her Majesty's Navy patrolled the sea?
With Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia, GSTQ came fully into its own, perhaps, during Britain's imperial zenith. The imperial trilogy - message: Britain is best; we'll thump anyone who says otherwise; Gawd Bless Yer Ma'am - could unite the nation, Scotland included, because the nation understood its own identity.
With the empire gone and the monarchy itself in question, the purpose of GSTQ, far less its terrifying tunelessness, seems harder to identify. Even the Britishness to which it relates (an "always partial invention", as Colley admits) is no longer unquestioned. The formula by which one could claim to be both Scottish and British, sing GSTQ and Scots Wha' Hae with equal gusto, is no longer acceptable to many.
We see the divide already at work in sporting occasions, when Scots expect and demand a song of their own, even when they insist on an execrable cod-Jacobite nonsense to replace unsingable Hanoverian propaganda. Childish, perhaps, but this republican does not stand for GSTQ when called upon to do so, never has, and enjoys the irritation of loyalists.
In any case, as even they have noticed, God is no longer indisputably British. The personal relationship between monarch and deity is no longer an article of faith. Times - and countries - change.
Yet anthems matter, even when their effect is negative. No self-respecting nation, whether superpower or tiny, tinpot dictatorship, is without one. When the 26 counties of Ireland achieved their independence God Save the King was the first to go but a martial ditty, The Soldier's Song, was demanded to underpin the founding myth of the republic. Former British colonies everywhere have done the same, as anyone who has suffered the Australian national anthem will attest.
Nevertheless, loved or loathed, GSTQ remains the Ur-anthem, the model for all the others. Each parping little brass band atrocity from around the globe owes something to it, whatever deference is paid to local culture. GSTQ has given us the idea of how an anthem should sound and any composer recruited by the Arts Council will be deep in controversy after the first performance if he or she has deviated much from marching band chauvinism.
But then, if the SAC's idea ever gets off the ground there will be arguments over the new anthem to dwarf any debate over the site for a Scottish parliament. People have very firm ideas about the subject, as those who have previously attempted to find a suitable tune for Scotland have discovered. "Godawful" is a word generally and generously applied.
Nevertheless, it may be that the SAC's wheeze is a symptom rather than a solution. Even if does not mean the end of Britain, home rule marks the end of one kind of Britishness. The old arrangement is falling apart. The process described by Colley in which Scotland, Wales and England drew together - and surprisingly quickly - in late 18th and early 19th century is in reverse. "Our" queen? "Our" hopes? If the reality is gone, why preserve the trappings?
The SAC has one small obstacle to cross, of course. Though it argues that a new anthem should be commissioned to inaugurate a new era in Scotland, it seems to overlook the fact that the subject of GSTQ will still be very much around. Even the Scottish National Party does not propose to sever the link with the monarch in the event of independence. If we still have a Queen, why replace her anthem?
Doubtless the SAC would say it is suggesting no such thing. Presumably it wants GSTQ retained for times when HM is around, with the new anthem being used on other "official" Scottish occasions.
Yet surely this would simply restate the question of identity time and again. GSTQ has helped to forge Britishness. Are we then to believe we can be British sometimes and Scottish when it suits; Scots among ourselves, separate and singing our own way through the world, British when royalty comes to call?
Therein lies the potency of anthems. Colley has argued that in the 18th century and afterwards "men and women shuffled identities like cards". That was only possible, however, because the shared idea of Britishness provided an anchor and a confidence that allowed local variations. Now Britain's military and commercial supremacy has gone; its future relationship with Europe is an unsolved mystery; and nothing can be taken for granted about its monarchy. What remains of Britishness involves the past, a shared history, and an old song.
These days, it is a song mocked and revered in equal reverence. It has been appropriated by English football thugs; sent up by the Sex Pistols; mocked by satirists. Sometimes it is solemn, sometimes a joke. But then, everyone's anthem is a joke to someone else, generally because the melodies have been specially crafted to bring out the worst in the average band but more often because we do not understand the emotions invoked and aroused by someone else's national tune.
As to that, what might one of our poets come up with to capture the spirit of Scotland in song? Would we succumb to the tartanry to which Scots themselves are secretly addicted? Would we celebrate the scenery? What sentiments could be heard - and in tune - as easily from football fans, statesmen or the Alexander Brothers? What do we think of ourselves that might warrant this imagined anthem of ours?
In other words, if you want a national anthem, first find your nation.