[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

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.

Ska'd, you're quite right it was the 1740s - I'm afraid my typing is as hopeless as ever. I think the argument over its meaning will never be resolved; as you rightly say it was written, in effect, for George II's son to big himself up by linking him to Britain's growing naval dominance. I personally don't believe, however, that the song is a paean to the sailors of Britain's navy, which was sort of the point I was trying to make about it not being linked to the armed forces, but rather to British might and the 'glorious' Prince of Wales.

Yeah, it's Heart Of Oak that explicitly praises the sailors of the Navy. But the thing with Rule Britannia - and one of the reasons for its longevity - is that different people have brought their own meanings and interpretations to it over time. For instance, as I wrote above, in the space of five years it quickly evolved from Frederick's personal anthem claiming credit for the victory at Porto Bello whilst thumbing his nose at the old man and his German ways, to the Patriot Whigs' exhortation for Britain to remain ready to face the twin threats of France and Spain, to a general celebration of Hanoverian constitutional monarchy over Stuart absolute monarchy. But by the 1780s, the "never never never" line was being used by abolitionists as a rhetorical tool to highlight the hypocrisy of praising British freedom while slave-catchers still advertised their services openly in newspapers. In the context of the abolition debate, Rule Britannia was framed as an ideal to live up to: its words would be meaningless until the principle of freedom it espoused applied to all men. And once slavery was abolished and the Royal Navy was leading the global fight against it, Victorians were able to bring an extra note of moral triumph to the party.

Some songs will always be prisoners of their origins. A World War Two ditty like "We're Gonna Have To Slap The Dirty Little Jap", for example, was (thankfully) never going to have a shelf life beyond August 1945, and you'd struggle to impart any deeper meaning to its lyrics other than a sincere lust for indiscriminate violence against people of a yellow persuasion. With that in mind, it's astonishing to reflect that a song with such a narrow initial purpose as Rule Britannia, written nearly 300 years ago, should have touched an ongoing chord with people in the way it has.