The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #16153   Message #874697
Posted By: masato sakurai
25-Jan-03 - 12:27 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Jingo Song / Macdermott's War Song
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: We don't want to fight
Presumably "Subject: Crimean War, 1853-1856" is incorrect.

From THIS PAGE (Macdermott's War Song (1878), written and composed by G. W. Hunt):

Music-hall singer G. H. Macdermott (aka "the Great Macdermott") found this piece immensely popular at the London Pavilion during a diplomatic crisis in 1878. Both Macdermott and the songwriter G. W. Hunt took themselves seriously as commentators on foreign affairs, an opinion not necessarily shared by Britain's foreign-policy decision-makers.

We attempted to interest a corresponding member in rendering the musical score, but he disparaged it as "second-rate Gilbert and Sullivan."

The Russians eventually agreed to retreat from Bulgaria, restoring it and Macedonia to Ottoman Turkish rule. The withdrawal was considered a diplomatic triumph of Britain's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, though it was not such a good deal for Balkan Slavs, hobbled by Ottoman misrule for another generation.