The crowds on The Mall were joined as one today as the National Anthem sung at St Paul’s Cathedral was broadcast from speakers hoisted upon lampposts ... but only until the end of the first verse. As the organist struck up again, the sea of jubilant faces suddenly creased with worry. How does the second verse go?
Most of the dedicated royalists who gathered to watch the Queen’s landau take her to the gates of Buckingham Palace lapsed into a sheepish humming in the hope that others would have a better recall of the words.
Comfortingly, the website of the Royal Household notes that there are no authorised words to the anthem, although it does give two verses that have been sung as a “matter of tradition” for the past 267 years.
The second verse published on the site begins: “Thy choicest gifts in store/ On her be pleased to pour...” (Other sources suggest that the second verse begins “Scatter her enemies...”, but this is not acknowledged by the Royal Household.)
Many in the crowd shuffled their feet yesterday when asked by The Times if they knew the second verse. Eileen O’ Connor, 56, a horse trainer who lives in Hampton Court, Surrey, said that she did her best to sing along.
Advertisement
“I always join in with it, but I never start it,” she said. “I’m going to go away and learn it now.”
Annette Parsons, a grandmother from Grimsby who brought her family to The Mall as a treat before she has open-heart surgery next week, asked whether the words were “la la la”.
“I have got it pinned up on the inside of the laundry cupboard at home, but I don’t know it off by heart. I wish I’d brought it.”
Policemen approached by The Times also admitted that it was not part of their training. Sergeant Darrell Horwood, 52, who has been on duty since 3am, said that he rarely had the opportunity to sing it.
“I’m not sure if anyone knows it, do they? Even at Wembley they only sing the first verse, which is the best one, in my opinion anyway.”
Advertisement
Chito Salarza Grant, a landlord and enthusiastic maker of spectacular hats for special occasions, did not offer an opinion on the National Anthem, but he did show off his most recent creation: a hat decorated with a model of a Mini festooned with dozens of Union Jacks and guarded at each corner by soldiers in bearskin hats.
“It is my 290th hat,” he said while the Mini’s lights blinked above him. “Thousands of people like to be photographed next to it. It’s painful wearing it because it’s so heavy. Usually it takes me three days to recover after wearing one of my hats, but after this I think it will take me a week.”
Some replied confidently that they knew it, only to begin singing the back half of the first verse instead. Others were more proficient.
Ruth Brice, 45, who works with adults with learning difficulties in Wandsworth, made only one slip while reciting it, but the most confident performers were Cindy Van-Ebo, 53, a teacher at St Lawrence College in Ramsgate, Kent, and her friend Christine Plant, 69, a retired nurse from Canterbury.
“Of course we do!” they cried when The Times asked, and then sang a hearty rendition.
Advertisement
Ms Van-Ebo, whose singing received a round of applause from the crowd, said that she had learnt it as a child. “We’re some of the few who sang it earlier when the anthem was played at St Paul’s,” she said. “I teach that to my pupils now. I do have to bribe them. Usually with chocolate.”