The Marseillaise

Reading an article somewhere about how expat French people living in northern Europe (which, for this purpose, is taken as including Ireland and the UK) will soon have their own MP, I realise that I don't actually know the words of the Marseillaise !

Off to YouTube then, to watch a few recordings, and off to Wikipedia for the lyrics. And — oh my ! — what a bloodthirsty piece ! I'll just include the first verse and the chorus here so you can see:

Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L'étendard sanglant est levé, (bis)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Egorger vos fils, vos compagnes !

Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !

So the soldiers of the tyrant's armies are "in our faces, slitting our sons' and our wives' throats". You can certainly hear the full-on hatred for the ancien regime there. [There's an accessible sample of the sort of things that went on under the ancien regime in the early parts of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: the hatred seems to have been very well deserved.]

I couldn't help comparing that amazing and wonderful, if also rather terrifying chorus to our own dear national anthem: "To arms, citizens! Form battalions! March! March and soak our fields with [their] guilty blood" ("guilty" is my own rather free translation of "impur"). No wonder the Parisian crowd seems able to come out whenever it wants to, if they're learning that in school, and no wonder French governments fall when it does. I can't imagine that the remnants of French aristocracy sing along to the Marseillaise quite as easily as Lady Whatnot might to God Save the Queen.

Speaking of which, I was of course singing along to YouTube, especially this rather ferocious rendition, when I realised that it was two o'clock in the morning of the weekend of the Queen's Jubilee — perhaps not quite the thing. I do hope my repeated clicks on this revolutionary piece haven't inscribed my name on the wrong hard disk somewhere, en secret...