To Anacreon in Heaven: O! Thus be it ever ...

We sing the National Anthem as a dirge. We plod through it, fearfully approaching highest notes. It was meant to be a celebration. The tune is a drinking song and everyone knew that when it was popularized.  The song was "To Anacreon in Heaven" and it honored the potential for romantic encounters. 

Official-Photo-Star-Spangled-Banner-Living-History_1.jpg

1

To Anacreon in Heav'n, where he sat in full Glee,

A few Sons of Harmony sent a Petition,

That he their Inspirer and Patron would be;

When this answer arriv'd from the Jolly Old Grecian

"Voice, Fiddle, and Flute,

"no longer be mute,

"I'll lend you my Name and inspire you to boot,

"And, besides I'll instruct you, like me, to intwine

"The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine."

2

The news through Olympus immediately flew;

When Old Thunder pretended to give himself Airs.

"If these Mortals are suffer'd their Scheme to persue,

"The Devil a Goddess will stay above Stairs.

"Hark! already they cry,

"In transports of Joy,

"Away to the Sons of Anacreon we'll fly,

"And there, with good Fellows, we'll learn to intwine

"The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine.

3

"The Yellow-Hair'd God and his nine fusty Maids,

"From Helicon's banks will incontinent flee,

"Idalia will boast but of tenantless Shades,

"And the bi-forked Hill a mere Desart will be

"My Thunder no fear on't,

"Shall soon do it's Errand,

"And dam'me! I'll swinge the Ringleaders, I warrant.

"I'll trim the young Dogs, for thus daring to twine

"The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine."

4

Apollo rose up, and said, "Pry'thee ne'er quarrel,

"Good King of the Gods, with my Vot'ries below:

"Your Thunder is useless" — then shewing his Laurel,

Cry'd "Sic evitabile fulmen, you know!

"Then over each head

"My Laurels I'll spread;

"So my Sons from your Crackers no Mischief shall dread,

"Whilst snug in their Club-Room, they jovially twine

"The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine."

5

Next Momus got up with his risible Phiz,

And swore with Apollo he'd chearfully join —

"The full Tide of Harmony still shall be his,

"But the Song, and the Catch, and the Laugh shall be mine.

"Then, Jove, be not jealous

"Of these honest fellows."

Cry'd Jove, "We relent, since the Truth you now tell us;

"And swear by Old Styx, that they long shall intwine

"The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine."

6

Ye Sons of Anacreon, then join Hand in Hand;

Preserve Unanimity, Friendship, and Love!

'Tis your's to support what's so happily plann'd;

You've the sanction of Gods, and the Fiat of Jove.

While thus we agree,

Our Toast let it be.

May our Club flourish happy, united, and free!

And long may the Sons of Anacreon intwine

The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine.

The signature is 6/4 in the key of C.
You can find "Anacreon in" 6/8 time.
Our banner song was formalized 3/4 time
but not a waltz about 1950. 

Acceptable performances of "Anacreon" here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MVYl8iy2Ic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ileDXkSTse8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l-n64NWHS4

280,551 views Feb 26, 2013

"The Anacreontic Song" Soloist: Jacob Wright Conducted by Jerry Blackstone From recording Poets & Patriots: A Tuneful History of "The Star-Spangled Banner," see http://starspangledmusic.org/poets-pa... Chorus: Justin Berkowitz, George Case, Mark Clague, Nicholas Davis, Stephen Gusukuma, Phillip Harris, John Hummel, Tim Keeler, Jonathan King, Nicholas Nestorak, Brandon Pemberton, Glen Thomas, and Scott Walters

And here - "Parody" they say but I say, "Right on." (This is a waltz.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-eZvRVywrA

6/4 time and Key of B-flat

"Myrtle has long been associated with Venus and love magick. Aphrodite is often shown wearing a myrtle-leaf wreath in her hair, and during the Roman festival of Venus Verticordia (Venus the Heart-Turner) on April 1, women bathed in water scented with myrtle and wore myrtle wreaths (the picture below shows a gold myrtle wreath from the time of ancient Greece).  In Eastern Europe, the wreaths held over the heads of a couple being married were originally made of myrtle (now gold crowns are used instead), and in Wales, brides once gave a sprig of myrtle to each bridesmaid.  In the Appalachian Mountains, throwing this magick herb into a fire was believed to make the face of one's future mate appear in the smoke.  In England, folk believed that myrtle wouldn't grow if it was not planted by a woman."-- http://www.alchemy-works.com/herb_myrtle.html

The Star Spangled Banner is a story and we stop at the opening scene. 

Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:

'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,

A home and a country, should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war's desolation.

Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Some people claim that the song is about Black slaves
but it is not. The third verse contrasts we free people
from the hirelings (Hessian mercenaries)
and slaves (subjects of the Crown). 

Chris Stapleton Sings the National Anthem at Super Bowl LVII 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFKXJ091Ed4

(Blues is very American.)

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Libraries of the Founders 

The Science of Liberty 

A Small Coin of Ancient Teos

Rebels: A Well-Regulated Militia (review) 

Liberty's Kids 

Veterans Day 2018 on Martha's Vineyard

Visiting family ahead of the Thanksgiving travel rush, I celebrated Veterans Day on Martha's Vineyard. My first undergraduate school was the College of Charleston, founded 1770. But despite Rutledge, Heyward, and Lynch, among many others including the humble Jackson family, conservative Charleston was mostly Tory during the Revolution. If you want to start a revolution, you need to go to Massachusetts.

His marker was added for the SAR by the DAR. Hers was from the
Coastal Defence Chapter of the DAR.

“Early in the Revolution Island attitudes were at least neutral if not favorable toward the Crown. The Islanders’ unmatched whaling skills were prized by the British, as they watched lucrative profits return to England. As such, the Vineyard enjoyed an administration of benevolent neglect from abroad. As early as 1775, however, as the British began closing nearby ports and occasionally coming ashore to requisition livestock, Islanders hardened their hearts towards the lobsterbacks.” 
https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2010/07/02/behind-birth-vineyard-revolution

Oak Hill Cemetery was the scene of a morning memorial.

“The most infamous and humiliating chapter in Vineyard history occurred on Sept. 11, 1778, the terrible Grey’s Raid, when ruthless British Maj. Gen. Charles Grey unleashed the full brunt of British Naval intimidation on the beleaguered Island with nearly 40 ships and over 4,000 troops. It was a bloodless pillage but a pillage nonetheless, as Islanders were forced to march 10,574 sheep, 315 cattle, innumerable bales of hay and 229 arms to present-day Vineyard Haven. Unsatisfied with these ill-gotten spoils, Grey’s men then scoured the countryside, looting house and field.”

 https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2010/07/02/behind-birth-vineyard-revolution

Previously on Necessary Facts

Do You Know Your Military?

Rebels: A Well-Regulated Militia

Plenty of Time When We Get Home

Atheists in Foxholes

The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave

When has our republic not been in danger of invasion from without or subversion from within? 

"[A] populist strand ... has run through American history since Jonathan Edwards led the Great Awakending against the sophistication that was blossoming in the eighteenth century and Andrew Jackson spearheaded a popular revolt against John Quincy Adams. In fact, the division between populists and the establishment has been a more fundamental one in American politics than that between left and right, liberal and conservative. Both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, like many of their predecessors, rode to the White House in large part by tapping an anti-Establishment vein in the populace."  -- The Wise Men: Six Friends the World They Made  by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1986; page 29.

Nothing in human history required the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. They were not the only documents of their kind. Before it was the United Kingdom, Great Britain had the Bill of Rights of 1689 which constrained the monarchy and included the right of the people (all of the Protestant ones) to keep arms in their homes. We all know the Articles of Confederation. But even that rested on the Albany Plan of Union, which itself was only one of several compacts over the previous two generations among some colonies for mutual defense. And the villages and townships were governed by elections, even—and especially—as the colonies lost their charters to the crown. 

The American revolution did not begin in July of 1776. The Marine Corps was founded on November 10, 1775. The battle at Breed's Hill and Bunker Hill had been fought on June 17, 1775, six weeks after Lexington and Concord. The Boston Massacre was March 5, 1770. The "American revolution" had already begun fifteen years earlier. The battlegrounds were the minds of Americans and the shots fired were ideas in newspapers, pamphlets, sermons, and private letters. 

Today, here in Austin, Texas, no parade will be held. We will have civic barbeques. Maybe that is enough, if it is true that 30% of the Texans in attendance will be carrying concealed handguns. I am less confident that 30% of them will have the post-graduate reading level necessary to understand the Declaration of Independence. (See here.)

Previously on Necessary Facts

Libraries of the Founders 

The Science of Liberty 

Rebels: A Well-Regulated Militia 

Liberty’s Kids 

The American Political Tradition and Profiles in Courage

Rebels: A Well Regulated Militia

Rebels: A Well Regulated Militia by Brian Wood is a graphic novel that explores the lives of otherwise ordinary folk caught up in the extraordinary drama of the American Revolution. The main characters are fictional representations of real people. Historical figures pass through the narratives to add credence to the portraits of farmers, villagers, slaves, and natives. These stories span a lifetime, from the 1750s to 1800s, bringing the reader to Vermont, the Ohio frontier, the Carolinas, and the city of Boston.

Rebels: A Well Regulated Militia by Brian Wood
with Andrea Mutti, Matthew Woodson,
and other illustrators,
Collections of Rebels #1 through #10 inclusive
(Milwaukee: Dark Horse Comics, 2016). 

 Anyone who can tell you much about the American Revolution is likely to be a political activist. Radicals, whether conservative or progressive, identify with the struggle for rights and independence, even as they find fault with it. On the left, the fact that the leaders were well-to-do merchants and lawyers explains the incomplete recognition of rights, the eventual three-fifths compromise, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and other betrayals of democracy. From the far right, libertarian science fiction author L. Neil Smith, who penned a set of Lando Calrissian stories, has an alternate universe in which Alexander Hamilton escaped to Prussia following a failed federalist coup to make George Washington king of America, leaving the republic to the true republicans.

Here, in essays apart from the graphic novel, author Brian Wood explains that he is a socialist. His passions for the commoner feed the compelling histories. The contextual events are real: Vermont’s war against New York, Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill, Ticonderoga, and the Cowpens. The men and women who fought and suffered and died or survived are inventions of the author. 

“Creating Seth Abbot was partly to give myself a break – a fictional character allows us to tell the story we all want to tell without being trapped by historical facts and having my hands tied narratively. I mean, the Green Mountain Boys were real, as was Ethan Allen and the “noble train of artillery,” but I wanted to be control of the personal narrative of the main character. Seth needed to be a sort of everyman. I also wanted to be able to filter some of my own stories of Vermont childhood, the history that excites me, and the locations I know personally into that narrative.” – “Interview: Brian Wood Returns to Rebels with the Next Generation,” by Jeffrey Renaud in CBR Exclusives here. 

Within the ten stories is the continuing drama of Seth Abbott and his wife Mercy Abbott. He leaves her behind as he goes off to fight. The second time, he does not know that she is pregnant. He returns five years later. 

Among Seth Abbott’s adventures is his leading the team that brought the cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to Dorchester Heights. In that story, Brian Wood’s socialist preferences lead him astray. He draws Henry Knox as a soft sycophant, a bookseller with no military or other practical experience. A bookseller he was. He was also a street tough, a hoodlum who acquired the trappings of culture and sold them successfully until Boston was occupied. That remaining so, we slog through the mountain snow and valley mud with the farmers who hauled the cannons. For them, it was just more hard work. As one veteran told me about his view of Army life compared to his home life, “In other words, the Army was a lot like Tuesday.”  

Jane Franklin Mecom promises to tell the story of
rebel printer Silence Brght

“We actually have Washington in the story in issue No. 4 along with Benedict Arnold,” he revealed. “Later in the year we’ll see Jane Mecom, Ben Franklin’s sister. I think it’s a good idea to drop these people in from time to time for context, but part of the point of ‘Rebels’ is to not re-tell the same stories everyone’s heard about these famous people, but to find the untold stories, the stories behind the folktales, and tell those instead. So you can expect famous cameos, but no more than that. Those public figures of 18^th century America are often referred to as “patriots” — a term that has been misused, misappropriated and/or misunderstood in recent years,” he said. Exclusive preview: “‘Rebels’ writer Brian Wood explores the Revolutionary War” Hero Complex LA Times May 12, 2015 here. 

Brian Wood invented Sarah Hull and her husband, Captain Samuel Hull. She is the “Molly Pitcher” whose service to her country included hauling water for the cannons and for the men who fired them, and then loading and firing those guns with them.  The real Sarah Hull was just as interesting. 

"But if we paid you, we would have to pay all the women who served."

“Sarah Hull, the wife of Major William Hull, was one of those women who followed their husbands to the camp, resolved to partake their dangers and privations. She was with the army at Saratoga, and joined the other American ladies in kind and soothing attentions to the fair captives after the surrender. She was the daughter of Judge Fuller, of Newton, Massachusetts, and was born about 1755. At the close of the war she returned home; and when her gallant husband was appointed general of the county militia, did the honors of his Marquée, and received guests of distinction with a grace, dignity, and affability that attracted general admiration.” “Sarah Hull” at AmericanRevolution.org here. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Money as Speech and Press 

The Science of Liberty 

Politics and the Inverse Square Law 

Tycoon Dough is Democratic