The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Star-Spangled Drinking Songs

A spangle is, of course, a little spang: a spang being a small, glittering ornament. Therefore, to be spangled is to be covered in small spangs, a fate that befalls the best of us at times.

The word spangled crops up in a poem by Thomas Moore – not the famous one, you understand, but the nineteenth-century Irish poetaster. He wrote:

It was one of Moore’s translations from the Greek poet Anacreon, who was an ancient boozer and lover and lyric poet. Anacreon’s poems (anacreontics) are all about getting drunk and making lyrical love in Greek groves. Anacreon was therefore a Good Thing.

Anacreon was, indeed, such a good thing that in the eighteenth century an English gentleman’s club was founded in his memory. It was called the Anacreontic Society and was devoted to ‘wit, harmony and the god of wine’. It was a very musical affair and two members wrote a society drinking song called ‘To Anacreon in Heav’n’. John Stafford Smith wrote the tune and the society’s president, Ralph Tomlinson, wrote the words. The first verse ran thus:

Bacchus’s vine is, of course, booze, and Venus was the goddess of sex. ‘To Anacreon in Heav’n’ was a good song with a very catchy tune (which you know). Because it was hard to sing, it became an ad hoc test of drunkenness used by the police in the eighteenth century. If you could sing ‘To Anacreon in Heav’n’ in tune you were sober and free to go. This is, if you think about it, an odd fate for a drinking song. It’s also rather unfair on those who can’t sing.

Unfortunately the song was so popular that it was usurped and stolen by a chap called Francis Scott Key, who wrote new words that weren’t about drink, but about being able to see a flag flying after a bombardment.

Francis Scott Key was an American lawyer. During the war of 1812, he was sent to negotiate with the British fleet for the release of certain prisoners. He dined aboard HMS Tonnant, but when the time came for him to leave, the British got worried. Key was now familiar with the British battleships: if he went ashore he could and would pass all this information on to the American forces. This was problematic, as the British were planning to bombard Baltimore first thing in the morning, and if the Americans found out it would spoil the fun. So they insisted that Key remain on board, and he was forced to watch the bombardment from the wrong side (or the right side, if you’re thinking about personal safety).

Bang went the guns, but the American flag at Baltimore remained high and visible amid the smoke. Key decided to write a song about it. He stole the tune from the Anacreontic Society, but wrote new words that went:

And the new title that he gave to an old drinking song takes us straight back to small spangs.