Tuesday, September 23, 2008

They're playing our song

As ships of various registry make their way along the St. Lawrence, the crew is often surprised to hear their national anthem bursting from the hillside. As one captain's log records, "There is a gentleman who lives high on a cliff overlooking the St. Lawrence who salutes each ship as it passes by with the national flag of the ship and its anthem. He has a large flagpole with yardarms and a gaff on which he runs up the flag. He also has a huge sound system that blasts out the anthem across the half mile river."
It was probably 20 years ago when I first heard this story. At the time, the man playing the national anthems would likely have had CDs or even vinyl recordings of the various anthems. Today, with the wonderousness that is the worldwide web, he could go to a site such as nationalanthems.info and, with a few mouse clicks, find the needed tune. (Did you know that the Finnish anthem is identical to the Estonian melody?)

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