Anthem is as anthem does. What with the rugby internationals last weekend and the ongoing Commonwealth Games, a mad medley of various national anthems has been grating around the airwaves. Some find them uplifting. For me, the jingoistic jingles jar, particularly as extended overture to the rugby when the camera, with ingratiating reverence, pans along the line of cauliflower-eared shaven heads which resembles a Dickensian identity parade at Tilbury and a last call for Magwitches bound for the colonies. Some players weep, others prefer the trance-like glare.
What, or which, is a national anthem these days? At Melbourne it’s been ‘Scotland the Brave’; at the rugby ‘Flower of Scotland’, a bland country-and-western-isles-type trill. During the Troubles the all-Ireland rugby team spurned any pre-match anthem. Now in Dublin they serenade themselves with two official salutes, the Gaelic anthem and the breezy ‘Ireland’s Call’ (‘Together standing tall, shoulder to shoulder’), plus a blast of ‘Molly Malone’ and ‘Fields of Athenry’ should they need a buck-up during the game itself.
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