The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #45195   Message #4096868
Posted By: Tattie Bogle
09-Mar-21 - 01:31 PM
Thread Name: ADD: songs for Women's Suffrage
Subject: RE: ADD: songs for Women's Suffrage
Here are the lyrics for The March of the Women, as sung by me last night, with some notes on the background.

The March of the Women

Shout, shout, up with your song!
Cry with the wind for the dawn is breaking.
March, march, swing you along,
Wide blows our banner and hope is waking.
Song with its story, dreams with their glory,
Lo! They call and glad is their word.
Forward! Hark how it swells
Thunder of freedom, the voice of the Lord.

Long, long, we in the past,
Cower’d in dread from the light of Heaven;
Strong, strong, stand we at last;
Fearless in faith and with sight new given.
Strength with its beauty, life with its duty
(Hear the voice, oh, hear and obey).
These, these beckon us on,
Open your eyes to the blaze of day!

Comrades, ye who have dared,
First in the battle to strive and sorrow;
Scorned, spurned, naught have ye cared,
Raising your eyes to a wider morrow,
Ways that are weary, days that are dreary,
Toil and pain by faith ye have borne.
Hail, hail, victors ye stand,
Wearing the wreath that the brave have worn!

Life, strife, these two are one!
Naught can ye win but by faith and daring;
On, on, that ye have done,
But for the work of today preparing.
Firm in reliance, laugh a defiance
(Laugh in hope for sure is the end)
March, march, many as one,
Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend!

Music by Ethel Smyth: Words by Cicely Hamilton
Ethel Smyth’s rousing March of the Women was composed in 1910 to words by Cicely Hamilton, with a tune adapted from a traditional Italian melody. Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) introduced it as the official anthem of the Women’s Social and Political Union and it became associated with the suffrage movement more generally.
This small pamphlet with the tune and words, easily portable and perfectly designed for distribution at rallies, was published by The Women’s Press in 1911, the same year it was sung on Pall Mall in celebration of the release from prison of a number of activists. The following year, the conductor Thomas Beecham (1879–1961) apparently heard it sung in Holloway Prison, where Smyth and Pankhurst were imprisoned.

And here is a great version by Sandra Kerr's Northumbrian women's choir: (click on the picture to start or stop the video)
March of the Women