I heard a wonderful story some years ago about two
Englishmen who lived in France – rural France, in the Saintes area – in the
1990s. They were enjoying coverage of an England–France rugby match during the
Five Nations series in the local tavern where they were known and on the whole accepted.
Unfortunately, our Englishmen made the mistake of crowing too soon – for much
of the match England was in the lead, and they were, of course, cock-a-hoop
about this. But in the end the French came with a late surge and won the match.
This was a mite embarrassing for our Englishmen, one can imagine, and it was made worse
by the action of one of the French fans who had been drinking in the tavern at
the same time. He swaggered over to their table, leaned down and thrust his
face close to that of one of the Englishmen, eyeballing him at close range.
“Hah!” he
exclaimed, in basic English, with a strong French accent. “That for Agincourt.”
Now the
Englishman dined out on the story in grand style, seeing this as evidence of
the pettiness of the French and their inability to understand the essential
camaraderie of sport. But when you look at the words of the French national
anthem, the Marseillaise, dating of
course from the days of the French revolution, but still sung with fervour,
before rugby matches and on the occasion of French victory in the Olympics for
example, it all makes a bit more sense. The Marseillaise
is, not to put too fine a point on it, rather a paranoid confection. Not only
do we have the warlike and rousing refrain “Aux armes, citoyens!” calling all
French people to fight for their country, but this call is based on the
conviction that the enemy is at the gate, threatening the people and all they
care for. The interesting thing is not so much the adoption of the Marseillaise in the first place, at a
time when the threat was real and most of Europe was at war or about to be
at war with revolutionary France, but that they still sing it, unexpurgated,
full of xenophobism and fury. Why is that, I wonder?
Much is
made of the Last Night of the Proms, and even of the mention of the Queen being
‘victorious’ in the British national anthem. These are sometimes said to
exemplify the gung-ho imperialism still underpinning our national life. But
when you remember that the vitriolic second verse of the national anthem has
been quietly dropped (I haven’t heard it sung in years), and that in the third
the Queen is reminded that she is to ‘defend our laws’ as a condition that we
continue to wish her to reign over us, you have quite a different picture. Not
to mention the fact that the most heartfelt community singing at the Last Night
of the Proms, and the place of honour at the end of proceedings, is reserved for
Jerusalem, which is essentially, for
all Blake’s warlike language, a pledge for civil struggle, for social justice.
I mention
these differences as observations. I have no idea at all what significance (if
any) they have. But I do just wonder whether, if the French were to decide to
dump the Marseillaise in favour of a
more peaceful song, Europe might be more ready to believe in their commitment to a united Europe. I haven’t
studied the words of the national anthems of other European countries, and
perhaps it would be an interesting piece of research. How much do the
sentiments of a national anthem affect the attitudes of the people of a country
towards their neighbours, and towards the wider world where there may well be
enemies? Is it something that we should consider more carefully?
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