{"id":46683,"date":"2021-12-16T01:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T06:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46683"},"modified":"2021-12-15T09:38:16","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T14:38:16","slug":"qotd-advance-australia-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2021\/12\/16\/qotd-advance-australia-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Advance Australia Fair&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Despite the remorseless filleting of the lyrics to &#8220;O Canada&#8221;, every year or two some grievance is lodged against the two or three remaining lines of the original. Thus:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>O Canada!<br \/>\nOur home and native land&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Which should of course be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>O Canada!<br \/>\nOur home on natives&#8217; land&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Game as I am to disparage the senior Dominion&#8217;s anthem, I have to say it&#8217;s effortlessly outpaced in insipidity by &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Australians all let us rejoice <br \/>\nFor we are young and free <br \/>\nWe&#8217;ve golden soil And wealth for toil<br \/>\nOur home is girt by sea&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;Girt&#8221; is famously the only point of lyric interest in &#8220;Advance Australia Fair&#8221;. Peter Dodds McCormick wrote the song back in 1878, which meant, by the time they decided to make it the official anthem twenty years ago, most of the verses were unusable. No point shaking off the old cultural cringe of &#8220;God Save The Queen&#8221; only to start singing couplet after couplet about &#8220;gallant Cook from Albion&#8221; and &#8220;true British courage&#8221; and &#8220;old England&#8217;s flag&#8221;. And how about this quatrain?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Britannia then shall surely know <br \/>\nBeyond wide ocean&#8217;s roll<br \/>\nHer sons in fair Australia&#8217;s land<br \/>\nStill keep an English soul &#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, after all the colonial sucking up was excised from the lyric, &#8220;girt&#8221; was pretty much all that was left. A few years ago, incidentally, there was an Aussie satirical magazine named <em>Girt<\/em> in its honor: I signed on with them but it folded after one issue. Don&#8217;t believe I ever got the check. Or cheque. I try not to be biased against &#8220;Advance Australia Fair&#8221; on that account, but honestly, was there ever such a gulf between the spirit of a great nation and its official musical embodiment?<\/p>\n<p>Mark Steyn, adapted from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.steynonline.com\/9160\/waltzing-matilda\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>A Song for the Season<\/em><\/a>, 2008.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite the remorseless filleting of the lyrics to &#8220;O Canada&#8221;, every year or two some grievance is lodged against the two or three remaining lines of the original. Thus: O Canada! Our home and native land&#8230; Which should of course be: O Canada! Our home on natives&#8217; land&#8230; Game as I am to disparage the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[331,6,57,41],"tags":[1011,200],"class_list":["post-46683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-cancon","category-humour","category-quotations","tag-colonialism","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c8X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46683"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70601,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46683\/revisions\/70601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}