Scatter her Enemies

Tuesday, 19 November 2002

The Republican debate has come to life again over the past few days. The former Chair of the Australian Republican Movement, Greg Barns, attacked the monarchy as a corrupt institution and a menace to democracy over the weekend and in today's Oz, Senator Amanda Vanstone argues for moderate constitutional change, while Amanda Shanahan makes the case for the Queen, with the occasional gratuitous side swipe at the usual suspects:

The royal household staff is composed of professionals doing a job and they would not have tailored their advice. But the homosexual clique within Prince Charles's household is a different issue.

I suppose it's possible that with the prospect of a Free Trade Agreement with the US, some people are starting to realise that we might cut a slightly ridiculous figure on the international stage if we become an economic dependency of the US on the one hand and remain a political dependency of the UK on the other. We have to make at least some show of being our own masters, so renewing the debate on whether we should replace the Queen with an elected president makes a lot of sense right now. It will certainly make the task of redesigning the flag to reflect our new position in the world much simpler - putting the Stars and Stripes in beside the Union Jack wouldn't have left much room below for the Southern Cross.

This means that Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy will have their work cut out for them, but no doubt they will fortify their spirits with the occasional rousing rendition of God Save the Queen. The much neglected third verse (the second rarely gets sung, but the third rarely ever makes it into print these days) is bound to be a crowd pleaser wherever our few remaining die-hard monarchists gather:

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her Enemies,
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Foil all their knavish tricks,
In thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!

Update: I have had a bit of correspondence on this item from Bruce E, who writes:

Gummo, as I learned it, that verse of our glorious national anthem
concludes,
God damn all heretics
God damn their knavish tricks
Confound their politics
God save the Queen.


Stirring stuff, eh?
Bruce E

As I informed Bruce, my source for the version I gave is a long lost copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern which I may have misquoted. On the other hand the song may have been bowdlerised at some stage in its history.