Anthem

[AussieMick]

The below article, syndicated (if thats the correct term) from The Times, appeared in The Australian newspaper today,

STAR-SPANGLED BANNER’S BOOZY, BAWDY PAST REVEALED

Jack Blackburn

For a nation that once endorsed prohibition, it is odd that the ­national anthem is sung to the tune of an old drinking song from a London gentlemen’s club.

Exactly how this came to be has been a mystery for more than 200 years, but it may now have been solved.

A historian from Newcastle University has charted how the tune of The Star-Spangled Banner made its way from the ­Anacreontic Society to baseball games and rodeos.

Oskar Cox Jensen says the tune was first purloined by a Liverpudlian abolitionist for a ballad, which was then adopted by revolutionary circles who spread it to America. “For years I just ­accepted the fact that the US ­national anthem began as an ­English drinking song as a quirk of history,” Jensen said before a broadcast of his research on BBC Radio 3. “The fact that the story involves so many key figures in the revolutionary world of the 1790s, from Thomas Paine to Mary Wollstonecraft ... helps ­explain how the tune took on such potent associations of freedom.”

This theory of revolutionary fervour may help the anthem ­appear more politically correct, as there is unease over the lyricist Francis Scott Key’s participation in the slave trade.

The tune started as the music for To Anacreon in Heaven, a bawdy drinking song at the ­Anacreontic Society.

In 1790 it was used by the abolitionist William Roscoe for Millions Be Free, espousing the hope that the French Revolution could hop over the Channel.

Jensen knew the song was praised by Wollstonecraft, and so traced it through revolutionary circles.

It was sung through the 1790s in taverns, and even heard by Paine before it was properly ­exported. “William Pirsson, a Chelmsford bookseller, upped sticks to New York in the early 1790s, and he took Millions Be Free with him,” Jensen said.

By 1798 it was reborn as Adams and Liberty for John Adams’s re-election bid. This led to Key using it for Defence of Fort M’Henry, which became The Star-Spangled Banner.

“The American national ­anthem got its tune not by happenstance but a series of revolutionary acts,” Jensen said.

THE TIMES

[Anita]

Michael,

Do you know when Oskar Cox Jensen broadcast his research on BBC Radio? I'm wondering when he first went public with his research.

[AussieMick]

Anita,
There's this (2013) but doesnt specifically refer to the US anthem
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d47008...rj38607075


and this from last week which I assume The Times used ...
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/lat...ledbanner/

[Anita]

(09-28-2024 10:57 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  Anita,
There's this (2013) but doesnt specifically refer to the US anthem
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d47008...rj38607075


and this from last week which I assume The Times used ...
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/lat...ledbanner/

Thanks Michael. The referenced link the Times used contains the BBC radio program download info. I listened to Dr. Jensen's presentation "The Star Spangled Banner, Jacobins and Abolitionists" He weaves his compelling research thread by thread using source documents to make his case. He's spot on! Well worth the 14 minute listen.