*clears throat* From memory, in honour of the day...

[camwyn]

o Canada
Our home and native land
True patriot love
In all thy sons command!
With beating hearts we see thee rise
The True North strong and free
From far and wide, o Canada,
We stand on guard for thee!

God keep our land
Glorious and free
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee!


... shoot, it was 'glowing', not 'beating'... oh well. Happy Canada Day, y'all.


(ETA: For those of you who were thinking of getting sniffy because I'm an American and I memorized the English words to the Canadian national anthem, I can sing all three verses of ours that are still in common use- and I just listed off all fifty U. S. states, from memory, in less than three minutes. Deal.)

Comments

[silly-dan.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

O Canada!
Terre de nos aïeux,
Ton front est ceint
de fleurons glorieux!
Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,
Il sait porter la croix!
Ton histoire est une épopée
Des plus brillants exploits.

Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

I'm American and I memorized the Canadian national anthem. It's better than ours, and it gives me something to sing at hockey games.

[camwyn]

Ours is very nice in its own way, but honestly- the tune was a drinking song to start off with, which makes it kind of hard for sober people to manage without straining something. I can live with it, mind you, I'm just sayin'.

[zed42.livejournal.com]

that's what we get for putting civil war poetry to marching music... most countries' anthems sound prettier than ours... except the german one. nothing sounds pretty in german. it's simply impossible :)

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

If it's that hard to sing sober, I cannot imagine how hard it must be to sing drunk.

[camwyn]

Oh, it gets worse. The original tune was entitled 'To Anacreon in Heaven'. How the smeg did the drunks ever get the word 'Anacreon' out in any kind of comprehensible fashion?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Include the mandatory note that nine out of ten Canadians are convinced it goes
The True North strong and free
And stand on guard, o Canada,
We stand on guard for thee!

and that when I learned it many decades ago 'God keep our land' wasn't there. Whether it's crept in since I don't know, but I hope not.

(Also in mondegreen land, I always heard the French line as Et ta valeur, deux fois trompée. What the FLQ hath wrought.)

[mephron]

One expects that was the POINT - to separate the lightweights from the True Drinkers.

[camwyn]

Well, that's how Michelle Kwan sings it in the mp3 I have of O Canada at home.

(er. One of the mp3s. *shifty look* got two. The other's the RCAF band.)

My father once started to make fun of me for having such a thing for Canada. He started singing the first line; I offered him five dollars if he could sing the next one, even if he got it only half right.

Still got that $5. Le sigh.

[silly-dan.livejournal.com]

Apparently, the lyrics had changes suggested in 1968, and made official in 1980. (See the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Canada).) I didn't know it had changed.

[silly-dan.livejournal.com]

Oh, your anthem is pretty, just nigh-unsingable. (Though if you ever want to change to "America the Beautiful", it might improve matters.)

[camwyn]

The topic gets raised every so often. Never seems to happen, alas. I should note that when I become Emperor I'm going to go with a wordless anthem and have it written by the team of Hans Zimmer and James Horner. My primary criterion for choosing a national anthem is 'it should sound very impressive and appropriate when played as our athletes receive medals at the Olympics'.

[whobunkyboo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it has crept in, and been universally adopted.

The thing that irritates me most about it (our anthem) is that several years worth of students at the elementary school where I teach are convinced that there is a key change just before "God keep our land", due to the STUPID recording of it that they have been listening to once a week!!!!! Grrr...Now any time they are asked to sing the anthem without the accompanying tape, they sing the key change anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[zed42.livejournal.com]

it's plenty singable... you just need someone to squeeze your nuts at the appropriate moment...

and "america the beautiful" probably would make a better anthem...

[camwyn]

Alto female here, honey. No squeezing in the world's gonna do the trick.

[zed42.livejournal.com]

oohh.... i like horner's work... especially the music he did for /krull/

[zed42.livejournal.com]

you can't win 'em all...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I don't even hear the key change when it happens, but 'God keep our land' puts my teeth on edge. OTOH I suppose aside from schools you never hear it sung, is why I wasn't aware it changed a quarter of a century ago.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was an actual drinking song. It was the theme song of a drinking club, so one expects that they at least attempted it from time to time while drunk, but it was certainly written while sober, and probably intended to be sung while sober.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Hmm, the revolution could fairly be described as a civil war, but by 1812 I don't think anyone thought of USAns and Canadians as the same people. It was definitely a war between two distinct nations.

[camwyn]

Aaah, hah, okay, makes more sense that way then.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Am I allowed to say that I think O Canada is a really stupid song? It even makes Advance Australia Fair seem less stupid by comparison. Both The Star Spangled Banner and God Save the Sovereign of Appropriate Sex are decent poetry, from an era when they wrote decent anthems, even though they have not much more than a nodding relationship with their tunes.

[camwyn]

Hey, I'm not fussed by it, so as far as I'm concerned, go ahead.

... gorramit, one of these days I'll remember that I'm logged into my RP journal.

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

Why, thankee kindly, m'dear.
We'd surely welcome you up here, y'know. Hell, they took me in ...

[whobunkyboo.livejournal.com]

Well, there isn't a key change, except in the arrangement my school listens to/sings along with. So our kids sing the key change no matter what! ARRRRRGH!!

I agree about the God bit though.

[zed42.livejournal.com]

i thought the rocket's red glare dealt with a specific civil war battle on the coast over a fort...

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Again, only if you count the War of 1812 as a civil war...

[zed42.livejournal.com]

i studied american history for 180 days, 15 years ago.... and slept through most of it... remembering that the start spangled banner was a poem about a battle in the first place is a major accomplishment for me... :)

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

An octave and a half. If I remember my reading, the average person can just manage this if it's pitched perfectly for them—but get bunches of people together, each singing the song pitched perfectly for him/herself, and you get a cacophonous mess.

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

Greece's anthem is bloody boring and repetitive and is sung to a rhythm eerily similar to that of The Star-Spangled Banner (though it only requires about half or two-thirds the range). Also, it's got over 150 verses—I don't remember the exact number, though only two are actually sung. (Legend has it that no one has ever memorized the whole thing, but I figure that on the off chance this is true, it's only because no one gives enough of a rat's ass to bother.)

[zed42.livejournal.com]

yeah, but the only time non-greeks ever got to hear it was when that guy won the gold in tae kwon do at the olympics last year... :)

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

This is probably true. :)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Just FYI, when I was a kid, I memorized all four stanzas of The Star-Spangled Banner. I was inspired by an Isaac Asimov mystery in which a German spy posing as an American is caught because the interrogator plays the game of "You say the first thing that comes to mind" with him. The interrogator says, "the terror of flight," and the spy comes back with "gloom of the grave."

As the interrogator pointed out, only a spy would have studied the national anthem so intently, so he wouldn't be caught not knowing it.

[camwyn]

Hey, as I said in the Guide, "Under no circumstances should anyone trying to pass for American learn more than the first verse, unless they are trying to get on a game show." For precisely the reason you cite- most Americans aren't even aware that their national anthem even has more than one verse.

Me, I learned the other verses because the hymnal at St. Francis of Assisi had a section for patriotic music and it got really boring during Mass sometimes. So I learned that and all the verses to both 'My Country Tis Of Thee' and 'America the Beautiful'. I knew about the 'o beautiful for heroes proved' verse before I ever even heard of Ray Charles.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Oh, and how many verses of 'O Canada' do you know?

O Canada, where pines and maples grow,
Great prairies spread, and lordly rivers flow.
How dear to us, thy broad domain, from East to Western sea,
Thou land of hope, for all who toil, the true North strong and free!

Et cetera.

[camwyn]

... there are other verses? Good Lord.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

I learnt that one in elementary school, but as I recall, there are twelve.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Actually, there are four. (http://www.chpsimcoegrey.ca/anthem.html)

[spritelord.livejournal.com]

Which is the verse that goes "Our country reeks of trees" etc etc?

[murgatroyd314.livejournal.com]

I would have been caught as a spy by that, and I'm a native-born American citizen. That was always my favorite verse. There's just something about the line "Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution."

[camwyn]

Alas, I never did get a reliable source of the anti-British verse... oh well.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

*scratches head* God save the King/Queen? Where is that decent poetry? I mean, maybe I just learned it wrong, but all I remember from that one is God save our gracious Queen,/Long live our noble Queen,/God save the Queen:/Send her victorious,/Happy and glorious,/Long to reign over us:/God save the Queen.
Which is, as far as I am concerned, pretty much the most boring text anyone could have come up with...
(And the tune is stolen from a German anthem. Not a good one, either.)

Not that Oh Canada is a good poem. But God Save Whatever Is Appropriate is even worse.

Now, the Marsellaise, that one has power... *g*