And Did Those Feet?

The BBC embraces the "fought in two world wars" zeitgeist by telling us that the nation's most popular hymn, Jerusalem, was composed to encourage the troops in World War 1 - as a friend of Robert Bridges set Blake's vision of a socialist utopia to rousing music.

It fails to draw the irony out, however, that Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry died of Spanish Flu just before the war ended.

I hope this is not a portent of Brexit, for which so many people who fought in both the Great War and its tricky sequel voted. The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-19 was a direct consequence of the war, as soldiers returned to their home countries from Belgium and spread one of the most lethal pandemics of all time. As we tick down the days towards Boris Johnson's do-or-die deadline (itself a phrase from a poem about a headlong charge into disaster),  remember Charlie Parry. The man who wrote a hymn to big up a pointless, damaging battle with our neighbours that left Britain shattered. And then died of it himself.

We should maybe consider getting a new theme song, as we head towards Brexit and more pointless deaths caused this time by our cutting our own supply chains to prove how strong we are. WTO sung to the tune of YMCA, perhaps. Or O Jeremy Corbyn. Or, once the barriers go up on Ireland, how about It's a Long Way to Tipperary?  But the risk is that, as British migrants to the EU make the journey back - the Brexit voters among them for the third time,  having previously returned in 1919 and 1945 - and as the people who have helped us keep the NHS going pass like the elves in the opposite direction, we reap another healthcare whirlwind.

Still, bring me my sword to cut red tape. And my arrows of desire for the sunlit uplands on which stand those dark, demolished mills. It's gonna be like Jerusalem. Probably about 70 AD.

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Want to support this blog? Want a good laugh? (or to shudder at death at any rate? Then here's two ways you can keep the Archdruid in doilies...
If you want someone to share the terrors of death while making you laugh, we have "A Hint of Death in the Morning Air" - 97 poems to make you wonder, laugh or shake your head sadly. At only £1 on Kindle. Or if you want to know what the people in the pews really think, and you prefer your words printed on paper, why not try "Writes of the Church"?  The letters to the Church magazine the vicar really didn't need.