who died in 1701, or his son James, the first Pretender. The song, then, is a Jacobite song; and the enemies, against whose politics and knavish tricks it is so devoutly damnatory are, as before said, the grandfathers, in various degrees of greatness, of her present Most Gracious Majesty. This has been before hesitatingly asserted, and stoutly denied in England;* but, it would seem, after a very partial examination of the subject; for at this very day the song, strangely enough, still retains evidence in support of its Jacobite origin, and also of the period at which it was produced. This evidence appears in the first and second stanzas, the former of which was thus sung, during the reign of the Georges God save great George our king! God save the king! Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us, God save the king! The advent of William and of Victoria to the throne, whose names would not fit the verse, made a change in the first line necessary, which is now sung, "God save our gracious Queen !" and this form will probably be preserved hereafter, adapted to the sex of the monarch, omitting the * See Chappell's "Collection of National English Airs." Vol. L p. 83. proper name. But while they were making alterations, it is strange indeed that one word was passed over. The neglect must have happened either from sheer oversight, or from the unwillingness to change, even from worse to better, which has become such a distinctive trait of brother Bull's character. The word in question is in the fourth line of the stanza : "Send her (or him) victorious, * * * long to reign over us." Send her whence and whither? Why, Victoria, William, George is there: in England: on the throne. It is as plain as the nose on a Bourbon's face that the king for whom that prayer was first sent up, was not within the narrow seas. He was over the water. This is made the surer by the form in which the stanza in question was first written, according to the testimony of those who had heard it sung before 1745, which is supported by interesting collateral evidence. "Send him victorious, Soon to reign over us, This king, very clearly, had not arrived, but was expected; and his faithful subjects were impatient. But rather equivocal-and yet rather unequivocal— words these, to be singing in the year of grace, 1740,. in the thirteenth year of the reign of our gracious lord and sovereign King George II., son and rightful heir of his most gracious majesty George I., of happy memory. The incongruity is said to have been seen by the composer himself, who sang the song in 1740, at a dinner given at a tavern in Cornhill, in honor of Admiral Vernon's capture of Porto Bello. He then changed "soon" to " long," and owned the song as his composition. But neither Carey, nor, strange to say, those who have since manipulated the song,* seem to have seen the full * The following is the form in which the song is now sung. 1. 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! 2. O Lord, our God, arise, And make them fall! Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, O save us all! 3. Thy choicest gifts in store Long may she reign! And ever give us cause, To sing with heart and voice, God save the Queen! In the last line but one of the last stanza, "To sing with heart and voice," originally stood "To say with heart and voice." was significance of the stanza; for while "soon stricken out, "send," the twin tell-tale, and the firstborn and louder-voiced of the two, was left, and has been prating, open-mouthed, of his bastardy, for a hundred and twenty years. And even now, if the inappropriateness of the neglected word should be noticed in the proper official quarter, so much does John Bull prefer his mumpsimus, that he is used to, to a sumpsimus, that common sense shows to be right; so reluctant is he to change for the better, that it is more than probable that the obvious correction to be made-" Grant her victorious "-will not be made, and that we shall hear him praying, "with heart and voice," for the very monarch to be sent to him, under whose glorious reign he is so happy as to be living. But the second stanza gives evidence even more strongly than the first, though not quite so palpably, to the Jacobite origin of this song: Merely observing the pitiful tameness of "And make them fall," and the ludicrous bluntness of the two following lines, remark particularly that this stanza concerns itself about a king who is in personal peril, from enemies open and secret, and who, with his faithful subjects, is awaiting deliverance. God is called upon not to "scatter his enemies "generally, but to arise, then and there, and do it quickly. The singers do not fix their trust upon the king, but their "hopes;" and deliverance is expected, longed for, and not only for him :--" God save us all!" See, too, in this light, the fitness and the significance of those two queer lines "Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks. Sung under the sceptre of Victoria, or her uncle, or her grandfather, they are relatively as absurd as they are intrinsically ridiculous. But think of them sung at night, in a retired room, over a jorum of punch or a magnum of claret, by a knot of Jacobite fellows, expecting the Pretender, and having in mind the politics of Lord Townshend and the knavish tricks of Walpole; and although the poetry is made no better, the incongruity disappears. It is not certain, however, that Carey originated the motive of this song; and it is not improbable that he derived the form of it, and some of the words, from an old Jacobite song now lost. For the following curious inscription has been discovered upon the drinking-glasses, among the relics preserved in Scotland, of an ancient Jacobite family : “God save the King, I pray ! God save the King! Send him victorious, Soon to reign over us! |