The Dominion Post on the national anthem

Submitted by LJ Holden on 28 June, 2009 - 13:32
The Dominion Post argues in an editorial that our national anthem, God Defend New Zealand should be changed. On Thomas Bracken they say:
He was enthusiastic about New Zealand, the land he immigrated to in 1869, he was an enthusiastic propagator of egalitarian ideas and, unfortunately for the All Blacks, he was an enthusiastic scribbler of schoolboy rhymes.
Personally I don't have a problem with God Defend New Zealand. It's our 'other' anthem - God Save the Queen - which grates with me. No, not just because it's about the Queen - because it's also a originally anti-Catholic tune. It was written when the Jacobites leader, Charles Edward Stewart (aka Bonnie Prince Charlie), landed in Scotland in 1745. In fact, one of the verses calls for us to "Confound their politics", originally "Confound their Popish [Catholic] tricks".

For a country where we tolerate the religious choices of individuals, that is unacceptable.

Comments

A Commonwealth Monarchist Writes's picture
Submitted by A Commonwealth Monarchist Writes on 29 June, 2009 - 04:39.
You have no need to be so aggrieved about God Save the Queen's "anti-Catholicism": as a Catholic myself, I have no objections to singing God Save the Queen, and nor do I intend on finding any.

I hope that you are even more appalled whenever the US national anthem is played, since, for a country which claims to have a "special relationship" with the UK, that it should continue (unlike God Save the Queen, which has been changed, after all) to tell so disdainfully of "the foul footsteps' pollution" of the King's men is, in this day and age, completely and utterly unacceptable...
LJ Holden's picture
Submitted by LJ Holden on 29 June, 2009 - 09:13.
Well that doesn't surprise me - it is Britain's national anthem after all (even though there are plenty of far superior songs - such as Jerusalem - without German tunes). But it's still an anti-Catholic song whether you choose to be offended by it or not.

No comment on the United States' anthem.
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