PRINTRed, White and Booze
Our national anthem’s unexpected origin
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July 1, 2009 | 12:00 p.m. CST
Tottering British hooligans wailing about women, wine and lechery isn’t exactly the image that comes to mind when someone mentions the “Star-Spangled Banner.” But maybe it should be. We’ve recently cracked open the history books and discovered how a lawyer’s poem set to the tune of a British drinking song became the national anthem of the United States.
Imagery of “the dawn’s early light” and “broad stripes and bright stars” has roused support from Americans for generations. British drunkards of the late 18th century, however, were roused in a different way by the song’s original lyrics: each stanza from the poem that inspired the “Star-Spangled Banner” ends with the line “The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus’s vine.”
Myrtle is a bushy shrub; Venus is the god of love; Bacchus’s vine is a reference to wine — You do the math.
Francis Scott Key popularized the national anthem’s predecessor, “Defence of Fort McHenry,” by setting it to the British tune “To Anacreon In Heaven.” The Anacreontic Society, a gentleman’s drinking club, used the melody 100 years before it became synonymous with our national anthem. Congress declared the “Star-Spangled Banner” the national anthem in 1931, 12 years after prohibition began. This proves one thing to us — alcohol and patriotism go hand and hand. Cheers.
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