My new anthem: Please all nations buy our meat
Last week, in a bid to be more inclusive, Australia changed its national anthem. The offending words in were that the country was ‘‘young and free’’. Given its indigenous people have been living on the continent for about 60,000 years, you can hardly call it young. To change ‘‘young and free’’ to ‘‘one and free’’ recognised the nation’s indigenous people, even though some believed the change was not Advance Australia Fair Dinkum as they were not consulted.
Our neighbour’s problems got me thinking about our own national anthems. That’s right – we have two. Fellow Boomers may remember having to stand for before movies started – and for most of us that was the national anthem.
But then, in 1972, when our rowing eight won an Olympic gold medal, the band inexplicably played
It is now only during royal visits that you are likely to hear
When I played in a military band, we had to be careful which one to play when. One time, half the band played while the other played
creating a soundscape that would make avant-garde composers proud.
The main trouble I have with is that it’s so dreary. It was composed by a choir master with an interest in daffodils, called John Joseph Woods, whom you will be forgiven for not having heard of. But at least the dreary music is not bombastic and jingoistic, like some of Thomas Bracken’s lyrics.
I have yet to meet a New Zealander who knows the last four verses of our national anthem off by heart. I don’t even know the first verse, in either language, which I discovered when I was forced to sing it, as part of a visiting delegation, in Paris. We did our best, but were then followed by about 100 patriotic French singing their anthem – one of the world’s best – at full tilt.
Our first stanza is hardly inspiring. ‘‘God of nations at thy feet’’. Whose feet? I’m sure the religious studies lecturers at Victoria What Do You Want From Him University could argue for hours about whether God, if she exists, has feet.
I propose a more practical and enterprising first sentence, such as ‘‘All you nations whom we beat [at sport], please buy our wool and buy our meat.’’
It gets worse. There’s blood lust in verse three as we ask God to ‘‘put our enemies to flight’’. I didn’t know we had enemies. And what sort of flight? Air New Zealand? What about quarantine?
If you can stay awake long enough to reach verse five, you will sing ‘‘Guide her in the nations’ van’’. I didn’t know our nation had a van. Those who travelled around Europe during their OE would say the VW Kombi is the nation’s van, while those who pile the kids into the van for sport every Saturday would probably nominate the Hiace. Good luck to any poet who can rhyme Kombi Van or Hiace.
Van is actually short for ‘‘vanguard’’, and I suspect it was used because Bracken needed a rhyme for ‘‘man’’ and he had already used up ‘‘plan’’ and ‘‘land’’.
Perhaps we could abolish verses 2-5 and replace them with ones that advertise our envy-of-theworld pandemic reaction. ‘‘All pandemics we shall hinder, thanks to Ashley and Jacinda, God defend our Covid-free land’’ should do the trick.
I have yet to meet a New Zealander who knows the last four verses of our national anthem off by heart. I don’t even know the first verse, in either language
As for the Ma¯ ori version, thank God it’s not a literal translation. While the English version puts ‘‘enemies to flight’’, the superior Ma¯ ori version simply asks that Aotearoa is forever great. My only quibble is that the drawn-out last line A-o-te-a-ro-o-a does not always encourage accurate pronunciation.
Perhaps we need an entirely new anthem? Put it to a referendum and I worry the masses might pick Sir Dave Dobbyn favourites like or
Nevertheless, our All Blacks singing the Herbs ‘‘Na Na Na’’ riff in
might sound great before a game. Perhaps we could mine our national poetry archive and the bright music lecturers at Victoria What Do You See in Him University could set it to music. Denis Glover’s sums up 1950s New Zealand, but today? Besides, it‘s an Aussie bird and I suspect our nervous prop forwards would find the high-pitched ‘‘Quardle Oodle Ardle Wardle Doodle’’ quite challenging just before a test.
One of our best poets, Allen Curnow, came up with the immortal lines, ‘‘Not I, some child born in a marvellous year, Will learn the trick of standing upright here.’’ While I love the national sentiment, I worry that, if it was set to music, our rowing eight, and all our other Olympians who win medals sitting on their butts, would try to stand upright while singing it, and their boat would capsize, and they would drown.
Tedious as it is, I suspect we are stuck with
for another few centuries yet.