The Greek connection to the US National anthem. Credit: Noah Wulf, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0/WikipediaBy Tony Cross
It’s fairly well known that the words to the US National Anthem were written by a 33-year old lawyer named Francis Scott Key, as he watched the British Royal Navy bombarding Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbour on the 13th and 14th September 1814.
The words that he wrote convey perfectly the sense of pride he felt as he saw the huge US flag still flying over the fort in “the dawn’s early light”.
Oh! Say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?And the red rockets glare, the bombs bursting in air,Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.Oh! Say, does the Star-Spangled Banner yet wave,O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?
He wrote the words as a song, and with a very specific tune in mind. Known as “Anacreon in Heaven” the tune was well-known in America at the time and was often used for patriotic songs. Francis Scott Key himself had earlier written another patriotic song, called “The Warrior Returns”, to the same tune.
