EDINBURGH TRIBUTE TO WORLD LEADER
Today’s Presidential inauguration will take place amid much pomp and ceremony.
Nothing, it seems, could be more American.
Only, there will be a distinctly Scottish component to the day’s events – once for the outgoing Barack Obama and later for the newly installed Donald Trump.
Sir Walter Scott wrote ‘Hail to the Chief’ in 1810 as part of his verse epic Lady of the Lake. The words were supposedly sung by unfailingly loyal 16th-century clansmen to their Highland overlord Roderick Dhu.
Roderick’s anti-Englishness made the lyric popular with a US audience around the time of the War of 1812, and – set to the music of James Sanderson – was adopted by the second-generation Scot President Andrew Jackson in 1829.
Sir Walter’s toe-curling original is not to everybody’s taste, but is preferable to the frankly abominable revised version of Albert Gamse, so we reproduce its first verse here:
We warned you.
Perhaps thanks to poetry-loving Council Leader Andrew Burns, the botanical themes in Scott’s original have not been lost on City of Edinburgh Council. A happily bedewed and sappy tribute to the new President adorns the east end of George Street behind the statue of James Clerk Maxwell.
You may enjoy its full, windswept magnificence in motion on our Facebook page here.
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