Facts and fancies for the curious from the harvest-fields of literature

by Unknown

OUR NATIONAL AIRS

An Air of Twelve Nations

The air of the German national hymn, “Heil Dir im Sieger Kranz,” was appropriated by English loyalty to royalty for the stirring verses of “God save the King.” When Samuel F. Smith wrote his patriotic song, “My country, ’tis of thee,” in 1832, it was sung in Boston to the same tune under the name “America.” Following England’s example of appropriation and adverse possession, we have held on to our stolen air ever since, although it is a never-ending reminder of God save the King, meaning the king of Great Britain.

According to a French journal, the Charivari, Handel copied the tune from a St. Cyr melody, the authorship of which is claimed for Luille. The common account attributing it to Dr. Bull is so far discredited as to make it unworthy of notice. Besides Germany, England, and the United States, it figures among the patriotic or national airs of nine other nations. In Bavaria it is “Heil! unserm König, Heil!” In Switzerland it is “Rufst du, mein Vaterland.” It is in use to various sets of words in Brunswick, Hanover, Wurtemberg, Prussia, Saxony, Weimar, and Norway.

The Rhode Island State Society of the Cincinnati, composed of descendants of Continental officers of the Revolution, was so strongly impressed with the incongruity of singing Smith’s national song to the air of the British national anthem on the Fourth of July, the date of the annual reunion, that a prize was offered for an original substitute. In response to the circular inviting composers to compete, five hundred and seventeen compositions were sent in and considered. The committee awarded a gold medal to Mr. Arthur Edward Johnstone, of New York. While the aim of the Society was to provide a tune for its own use on its Fourth of July and other patriotic celebrations, it has no desire to monopolize the air which was selected, but freely offers this stirring and dignified strain to popular acceptance.

The statement that the air of the German national hymn was due to French inspiration is confirmed in the “Memoirs of Madame de Gregny,” in which we find the canticle that used to be sung by the young ladies of St. Cyr whenever Louis XIV. entered their chapel to hear morning mass. The first stanza was as follows:

Grand Dieu sauve le Roi!

Grand Dieu venge le Roi!

Vive le Roi!

Que toujours glorieux,

Louis victorieux,

Voye ses enemies

Toujours soumis.

The words were written by de Brenon, and the music, as stated, was by Luille, who was a distinguished composer. German sensitiveness over this French origin may find an offset in the allegation that neither the words nor the music of the Marseillaise hymn were composed by the Strasburg soldier Rouget de l’Isle. In the memoirs of Baron Bunsen it is authoritatively stated that the melody, which is found among the folk-songs of Germany, was written by a composer named Holzman, in 1776, when de l’Isle was a mere child.

Hail Columbia

The music of Hail Columbia was written as a march, and went at first by the name of “Washington’s March.” At a later period it was called “The President’s March,” and was played in 1789, when Washington went to New York to be inaugurated. A son of Professor Phyla, of Philadelphia, who was one of the performers, says it was his father’s composition. It had a martial ring that caught the ear of the multitude, and became very popular. Mr. Custis, the adopted son of Washington, says it was composed in 1789 by a German named Fayles, leader of the orchestra and musical composer for the old John Street Theatre in New York, where he (Custis) heard it played as a new piece on the occasion of General Washington’s first visit to the theatre. The two names, Phyla and Fayles, are most likely identical, and confused by mispronunciation, and the stories do not materially contradict each other.

After Joseph Hopkinson wrote the national ode for adaptation to the tune of the President’s March, it became known as Hail Columbia, and was first sung at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, in 1798.

The Star-Spangled Banner

The stirring and popular air, originally a convivial song, applied to Key’s immortal verses, is attributed, upon what appears to be good authority, to a famous English composer, Samuel Arnold, who was born in London in 1739. His compositions include forty-seven operas, which were popular in his day, though they have not outlived that period, four oratorios, and numerous sonatas, concertos, overtures, and minor pieces. At the request of George III. he superintended the publication of the works of Handel in thirty-six folio volumes. In 1783 he was made organist and composer of the Royal Chapel, and, ten years later, organist of Westminster Abbey, where he was buried when he died in 1802.

But this alleged authorship of the song and the music was disputed by the Anacreontic Society of London. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the jovial association known as “The Anacreontic” held its festive and musical meetings at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, a house of entertainment frequented by such men as Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Dr. Percy. At one time, the president of the Anacreontic was Ralph Tomlinson, Esq., and it is claimed that he wrote the words of the song adopted by the club, while John Stafford Smith set them to music. The style of this merry club will be best exemplified by the first and last stanzas of the song:

“To Anacreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee,

A few sons of Harmony sent a petition

That he their inspirer and patron would be,

When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian—

‘Voice, fiddle, and flute,

No longer be mute!

I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot;

And besides, I’ll instruct you like me to entwine

The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.’”

This sets Jove and the gods in an uproar. They fear that the petitioners will become too jovial. At length they relent. There are six stanzas, and the last is as follows:

“Ye sons of Anacreon, then join Hand in Hand,

Preserve unanimity, friendship, and love;

’Tis yours to support what’s so happily planned;

You’ve the sanction of gods and the fiat of Jove.

While thus we agree,

Our toast let it be,

May our club flourish happy, united, and free;

And long may the sons of Anacreon entwine

The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.”

The last two lines of each stanza were repeated in chorus. In this country, “To Anacreon in Heaven” was first adapted to a song written for the Adams campaign by Robert Treat Paine. It was entitled “Adams and Liberty,” and was first sung at the anniversary of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society in 1798.

After the rout at Bladensburg and the capture of Washington by the British forces, the invaders, under General Ross and Admiral Cockburn, proceeded up the Chesapeake to attack Baltimore. Its brave and heroic defenders were reinforced by volunteers from neighboring sections. Among the recruits from Pennsylvania who hastened to offer their services was a company from Dauphin County under the command of Captain Thomas Walker. When Francis Scott Key, while detained as a prisoner on the cartel ship in the Patapsco, saw “by the dawn’s early light” that “our flag was still there,” he was inspired to write his splendid verses, and on his release and return to Baltimore, one of the mess of Captain Walker’s company, who had been fortunate enough to obtain a rude copy, was so impressed with its inspiriting vigor that he read it aloud to his comrades three times. Its effect was electric, and at once the suggestion was made that a suitable air be found to which it could be sung. A young man named George J. Heisely, then from Harrisburg, though he had formerly lived in Frederick, and was well acquainted with Mr. Key, was so devoted to music that he always carried his flute and his note-book with him. Taking them out, he laid his flute on a camp barrel, and turned over the leaves of his note-book until he came to Anacreon in Heaven, when he was immediately struck with the adaptability of its measure. A strolling actor, a member of the company from Lancaster, named Ferdinand Durang, snatched the flute, and played the air, while Heisely held up the note-book. On the following evening Durang sang the Star-Spangled Banner for the first time on the stage of the Holliday Street Theatre.

The Red, White, and Blue

It is stated that “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” or the “Red, White, and Blue,” was written and composed in 1843 by David T. Shaw, a concert singer at the Chinese Museum, Philadelphia. The statement is also made that the authorship of the words and music was traced to Thomas A. Becket, an English actor then playing at the Chestnut Street Theatre. Whether the words were written by Shaw or for him, it is clear that the Columbia, Gem of the Ocean of Shaw is a “dodged” version of the English original “Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean,” which Shaw had the credit of writing. An English commentator says that “the word Britannia fits the metre, whereas Columbia is a lumbering word which cannot be pronounced in less than four syllables; that while an island may properly be styled a ‘gem of the ocean,’ the phrase would have been absurd when applied to the United States of that day, and is even more incorrect now when the vast mass of land comprised in its territory is only partly surrounded by three oceans; and there are two Columbias, the South American Columbia and British Columbia. The United States of America was never known by such a title.”

Yankee Doodle

American philologists have endeavored to trace the term Yankee to an Indian source. It is not Indian, however, but Dutch. If one might characterize the relations between New England and the New Netherlands in the early colonial period, he would say with Irving that “the Yankee despised the Dutchman and the Dutchman abominated the Yankee.” The Dutch verb “Yankee” means to snarl, wrangle, and the noun “Yanker,” howling cur, is perhaps the most expressive term of contempt in the whole language. Out of that acrimonious struggle between Connecticut and New Amsterdam came the nickname which has stuck to the descendants of the Puritans ever since.

The adoption of the air of Yankee Doodle has been credited to Dr. Shackburg, a wit, musician, and surgeon, in 1755, when the colonial troops united with the British regulars in the attack on the French outposts at Niagara and Frontenac. It was aimed in derision of the motley clothes, the antiquated equipments, and the lack of military training of the militia from the Eastern provinces, all in broad contrast with the neat and orderly appointments of the regulars. Be this as it may, the tune was well known in the time of Charles II., under the name “Lydia Fisher’s Jig.” Aside from the old doggerel verses, commencing “Father and I went down to camp,” there is no song; the tune in the United States is a march. It was well known in Holland, and was in common use there as a harvest-song among farm-laborers, at a remote period.

A late number of the Frankfurter Zeitung furnishes some interesting information in a paragraph which is translated as follows by the United States Consul at Mayence, Mr. Schumann:

“In the publication Hessenland (No. 2, 1905) Johann Lewalter gives expression to his opinion that Yankee Doodle was originally a country-dance of a district of the former province of Kur-Hesse, called the “Schwalm.” It is well known that the tune of Yankee Doodle was derived from a military march played by the Hessian troops during the war of the Revolution in America. In studying the dances of the Schwalm, Lewalter was struck by the similarity in form and rhythm of Yankee Doodle to the music of these dances. Recently, at the Kirmess of the village of Wasenberg, when Yankee Doodle was played, the young men and girls swung into a true Schwälmer dance, as though the music had been composed for it. During the war of 1776 the chief recruiting office for the enlistment of the Hessian hired soldiers was Ziegenhain, in Kur-Hesse. It, therefore, seems probable that the Hessian recruits from the Schwalm, who served in the pay of Great Britain in America during the Revolutionary War, and whose military band instruments consisted of bugles, drums, and fifes only, carried over with them the tune, known to them from childhood, and played it as a march.”