Loved by many, observed by most and loathed by a few, the playing of the anthems is an enduring part of the international game. Goal takes as a look at one of those tunes that is sometimes heard at the World Cup and European Championship, Flower of Scotland , used by Formally speaking, God Save The Queen is the national anthem of the whole United Kingdom, meaning the Scots, however unwillingly, are ultimately tethered to the anthem of their greatest sporting rivals.
The Hills are bare now, And Autumn leaves lie thick and still, O'er land that is lost now, Which those so dearly held, That stood against him against who? Once again, though, it is militaristic and like Flower of Scotland looks backwards to the Battle of Bannockburn.
It may also be tainted by its association with one political party. Freedom Come All-Ye, a song written to the pipe tune The Bloody Fields of Flanders by Scots folklorist, poet and academic Hamish Henderson, is another contender, with excellent, outward-looking lyrics. It is though written in broad Scots, which some believe would be difficult for many Scots to learn and sing.
Its tune has been around since the early years of the 20th Century, though it is a variant of the traditional song Wha Saw the 42nd? The words of Scotland the Brave were, perhaps surprisingly, written by Glasgow journalist Cliff Hanley for a Christmas pantomime as recently as the early s. Again, although everyone knows the tune, few people are really familiar with the words. In recent years, some have suggested Highland Cathedral, written by two German musicians for a Highland Games meeting in Germany in But as Scots musician Phil Cunningham has pointed out, if you take out the bagpipes, the tune sounds German, not Scottish.
It was, though, the choice of former first minister Jack McConnell when the issue of a national anthem for Scotland was raised politically back in There was even an idea that a new song could be written to fit the bill. The earliest was the Dutch national anthem "Het Wilhelmus", written around Spain came next, with the "Marcha Real" in Pretty much everyone else followed in the s. Scotland's problem stems from the fact that the period of the growth in anthems was also the period of lowest ebb in the fortunes of Scotland's nationhood.
In the Scottish Parliament voted itself out of existence by approving the Act of Union with England, and for the next two centuries there seemed every chance that Scotland would lose even its name in favour of "North Britain".
Few imagined the possibility of the re-emergence of Scotland as a nation in need of an anthem. There are two problems with this. The first is that the anthem is a deeply uninspiring dirge: but you only have to listen to anthems from around the world to realise that arguments of taste have little to do with their selection. The second is a more serious problem. The UK national anthem first came to prominence during the Jacobite uprising.
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