Nuts and Bolts: National Anthems

It's not easy, writing a National Anthem. You're not going to please everybody, even if you have a top person writing the tune. Josef Haydn wrote the music Germany uses for its National Anthem (though Haydn actually wrote it for the Emperor of Austria), but the German Anthem is currently being attacked by feminists for going on about The Fatherland.

It could be worse: the Bulgarian anthem, Mila Ridieno, or My Motherland, is, oddly but consistently, identified by Siri, the Google Avatar, as Lius Fonzi and Daddy Yankee's Despacito.


The words for India's National Anthem were written by Rabindraneth Tagore, no less, but people still complained about the Indian National Anthem's performance at a cricket match last year because Amitabh Bachchan sang Tagore's words too slowly.

The Czech National Anthem is currently getting it in the neck for being too short and unpatriotic: but can it really be worse than the Greek National Anthem, which weighs in at a hundred and fifty eight verses? Or the British National Anthem, which actually calls, in a never-sung verse, for one part of the population, Scottish rebels, to be crushed?

Or how about the Netherland's National Anthem, which proclaims lifelong honour to the king of...well, can you guess?*


I suppose the purpose of a  National Anthem is that it brings people together in an expression of solidarity and support for their country; that it has a rousing and bracing effect.

So I'll leave you with a couple of lines from the National Anthem of the Congo:

And if we have to die
Does it really matter?

On the whole I think I'm happier bawling God Save Our Gracious Queen than that.

Word To Use Today: anthem. This word comes from the Old English anthemne, from the Latin antiphōna, which means sung.

*Spain!