26-08-2020, 16:11
(26-08-2020, 15:50)BaggieSteve Wrote: It was written in the 1760s, it bore no relation whatsoever to the armed forces when it was written (it has closer links to the Revolution of 1688 and the following year's Bill of Rights than it does to the military) and bears absolutely none now.
1740s, not 1760s. It *did* bear some relation to the armed forces, as it was written for a masque about King Alfred's navy repelling a Viking invasion, and presented a deliberate parallel between that conflict and the ongoing War of Jenkin's Ear, with Alfred a proxy for the German-born but highly Anglophilic Prince of Wales, who'd commissioned both the masque and the song to big himself up as a potential future king.
The Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights were thrown into the mix more as a result of its adoption by the anti-Walpole Patriot Whigs, and when the Jacobites had another crack at the throne in '45, its themes of constitutionalism over absolutism were cemented in.
Honestly, I haven't sung it myself since I was a kid, but there's nothing remotely objectionable about it, it doesn't do anyone any harm whatsoever, so people who enjoy it should have every chance to.
"I would rather spend a holiday in Tuscany than in the Black Country, but if I were compelled to choose between living in West Bromwich or Florence, I should make straight for West Bromwich." - J.B. Priestley