If it's nae Scottish, IT'S CRAP!

Via Fred, I see that the Royal Scottish National Orchestra wants Scotland to stop using "God Save the Queen" as its anthem. GStQ is a nice enough tune, but we can't really expect the Scots to sing the sixth verse with any real fervor:

Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the King!

Yup. They sure wouldn't like that, would they? So the RSNO has picked five possible replacements, and are soliciting people to listen to them and then vote for a favorite.

I've already heard most of these before -- you run into this kind of thing a lot when you listen to a lot of Celtic music -- but I wonder why they didn't offer Dougie MacLean's wonderful "Caledonia"?

(Speaking of anthems, I've never been wild about "The Star Spangled Banner". I'd personally go with "America the Beautiful" or "This Land Is Your Land". As for the big "unofficial" anthems we seem to have these days, I'm pretty tired of "God Bless America", and I could live my whole life and very happily never hear "God Bless the USA" again.)