text re "Brittannia" ??

[skuthorp]

Just recieved text message from overseas reading
"just helped rig Brittannia".
Anyone got an idea about this? Don't recognise the number and I don't want to reply from here as there are a few scams about.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

No idea, but the name of the former British Royal Yachts - the Big Class cutter scuttled in the Channel in 1936 and the steam yacht built in 1952 and laid up in 1998 - is "Britannia", with but a single "t".

Amusingly enough, there is a "Britannia" on the UK register of ships right now - she is a 45,000 dwt bulk carrier, owned by a chap whom I know slightly, called Alan Bekhor. She was being built for him in Japan when the Royal Yacht was decomissioned and, having a sense of humour, he rang up the Registrar of Ships to ask if the name was reserved (you are allowed to do this, because shipping companies use the name of their ships to promote their businesses) and it was not, so he bagged it!:D

But I doubt if she needs much rigging.

[Alan D. Hyde]

FromWikipedia---

When Britain first at Heav'n's command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain;

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves:
Britons never shall be slaves.

The nations not so blest as thee,
Shall in their turns to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves:
Britons never shall be slaves.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast that tears the skies,
Serves but to root thy native oak.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves:
Britons never shall be slaves.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame,
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame;
But work their woe, and thy renown.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves:
Britons never shall be slaves.

To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves:
Britons never shall be slaves.

The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest Isle! With matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guide the fair.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves:
Britons never shall be slaves.

Although the lyrics are always set out as above, the lines are not sung this way; there is much repetition within verses. Thus, the first verse becomes:

When Britain first at Heav'n's command
Arose from out the azure main;
Arose, arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter, the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain;

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves:
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

* * * * * * *

Alan

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Originally, the poet, James Thomson, was better known than the composer, Thomas Arne, but nobody reads Thomson now.

Fun to sing on the Last Night of the Proms.

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

That's a name I'd not considered in years - there's a memorial to him atop a drumlin about a half mile east of the racecourse at Kelso.

If that isn't the very epitome of a piece of useless information, then I don't know what is.

[Alan D. Hyde]

Hymn on Solitude

Hail, mildly pleasing Solitude,
Companion of the wise and good,
But from whose holy piercing eye
The herd of fools and villains fly.
Oh! how I love with thee to walk,
And listen to thy whispered talk,
Which innocence and truth imparts,
And melts the most obdurate hearts.
.....A thousand shapes you wear with ease,
And still in every shape you please.
Now wrapt in some mysterious dream,
A lone philosopher you seem;
Now quick from hill to vale you fly,
And now you sweep the vaulted sky;
A shepherd next, you haunt the plain,
And warble forth your oaten strain;
A lover now, with all the grace
Of that sweet passion in your face;
Then, calmed to friendship, you assume
The gentle looking Hertford's bloom,
As, with her Musidora, she
(Her Musidora fond of thee)
Amid the long-withdrawing vale
Awakes the rivalled nightingale.
.....Thine is the balmy breath of morn,
Just as the dew-bent rose is born;
And, while meridian fervors beat,
Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;
But chief, when evening scenes decay
And the faint landscape swims away,
Thine is the doubtful soft decline,
And that best hour of musing thine.
.....Descending angels bless thy train,
Thy virtues of the sage and swain--
Plain Innocence, in white arrayed,
Before thee lifts her fearless head;
Religion's beams around thee shine
And cheer thy glooms with light divine;
About thee sports sweet Liberty,
And rapt Urania sings to thee.
.....Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell,
And in thy deep recesses dwell!
Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill,
When Meditation has her fill,
I just may cast my careless eyes
Where London's spiry turrets rise,
Think of its crimes, it cares, its pain,
Then shield me in the woods again.

James Thomson (1700-1748)

* * * * * * *

Alan

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I had to grind through him, too!

Agree about the "precursor"; disagree about the "talent"!:)

Thomas Gray and William Collins, on the other hand, did manage some good stuff and Gray's Elegy is a truly great poem - one of the greatest, I think.

[Presuming Ed]

I did hear that one of the founders of the "Pret a Manger" sandwich chain (good sandwiches as long as you enjoy huge quantities of mayo with everything!) had built a Britannia replica/recreation (The Watson one, with the spoon bow). Haven't heard anything more, though.

Also weren't there vague stories in Classic Boat a while ago about someone building a (nother?) Britannina replica/recreation in Russia? Vague memories about that - no idea is this was the same or a different boat.

[Alan D. Hyde]

he was a perspicacious (and perspiratious) rough-hewn pioneer, who cleared & blazed a trail on which those who followed him could walk with more grace and cleverness than he could do in the tangled woods as he found them.

A little magnanimity never falls amiss...

To quote www.slainte.org.uk ---

"James Thomson was one of the most influential British poets, yet there is no significant writer, before or since, more disparaged.

John Veitch in The Feeling for nature in Scottish poetry offered an explanation for this paradox by pointing out that English was not his native language, but a foreign language which he had to acquire.

Thomson's seminal work, The Seasons (1726-30, revised 1744), is a laboured and uneasy epic poem, yet it is considered to be the first substantial poem in English to have Nature, or, perhaps, the landscape, as its main subject. Thomson is, properly, credited by historians of the Picturesque, with occupying a position analogous to that of Claude or Poussin in painting. The Seasons is said to have inspired Turner, and Wordsworth and Coleridge. Haydn used a translation of The Seasons as text for his oratorio Die Jahreszeiten."


* * * * * * *

Would that I could leave this planet having had such salutory effects on my contemporaries, and posterity... :)

Alan

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Umm. I doubt very much that he "had to acquire" English; his native tongue would have been Scots, which is intelligible to an Englishman*, rather than Gaelic!

He rates above his fellow countryman and near contemporary James McPherson, the dreadful fraud who produced "Ossian"and who was detected by Samuel Johnson (now, there IS a great man, and a great poet, for you!) but not that far above!

* Provided the speaker is sober, and not from Glasgow.

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

...his native tongue would have been Scots, which is intelligible to an Englishman*, rather than Gaelic!

An Englishman perhaps, but which one? Thomson was at school in Jedburgh although he had been born in Ednam (distant some twelve statute miles) and counted himself a Jethart lad. To this day the twenty five mile journey from Ednam to Hawick will encompass at least four distinct accents and several differing grammatical usages and quirks, while the same distance south from Jedburgh will get you (technically) a different language.

Go there thinking you are in a homogenous Britain - and you will deserve the culture shock.

Quiz question: Which part of a lighthouse was invented by a man from Jedburgh.

[John B]

I remember the 'russia' and some reference to a new Britannia being built.
They built a new Ranger and a new Westward so it would be an impressive sight to see em all hook up .. with the Js and Cambria.