MacDermott’s War Song

AKA	The Jingo Song
First published	1877

Lyrics

GW Hunt

Music

GW Hunt

Roud Index

V38547

The ‘Dogs of war' are loose and the rugged Russian Bear
Full bent on blood and robbery, has crawled out of his lair
It seems a thrashing now and then, will never help to tame
That brute, and so he's bent upon the ‘same old game'
The Lion did his best to find him some excuse
To crawl back to his den again, all efforts were no use
He hungered for his victim; he's pleased when blood is shed
But let us hope his crimes may all recoil on his own head.

We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do
We've got the ships, we've got the men' we've got the money too
We've fought the bear before, and while we're Britons true
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.

The Turk has got his faults; of crime he bears the taint
The Russians like sly Reynard, pretends to be a saint
‘Tis all for Christianity the heathen Turk he'll fight
Although' when told, and pretty plain, two wrongs don't make a right
As peacemaker Old England her very utmost tried
The Russians said they wanted peace, but then the Russians lied
Of carnage and of trickery they'll have sufficient feast
Ere they dare to think of coming near our Road unto the East.

The misdeeds of the Turks have been ‘spouted thro' all the lands
But how about the Russians, can they show spotless hands?
They slaughtered well at Khitva, in Siberia icy cold
How many subjects done to death will ne'er perhaps be told
They butchered the Circassians, man, woman, yes and child
With cruelties their Generals their murderous hours beguiled
And poor unhappy Poland their cruel yoke must bear
Whilst prey's for Freedom and Revenge go up into the air.

May he who ‘gan the quarrel soon have to bite the dust
The Turk should be thrice armed for he hath his quarrel just
‘Tis said that countless thousands should die thro' cruel war
But let us hope most fervently ere long it will be o'er
Let them be warned, Old England is brave old England still
We've proved our might; we've claimed our right and ever will
Should we have to draw our sword our way to victory we'll forge
With the battle cry of Britons, ‘Old England and Saint George'. 

(The text below was originally a blog post on jingoism.)

According to the Oxford English dictionary, “jingo” was originally a word used by magicians, equivalent to something like “Hey presto!”. In the early 19^th century “by jingo” became a jokey alternative to swearing in the Halls and elsewhere. It is in this sense that jingo was used in MacDermott’s War Song (aka “The Jingo Song”) with its chorus:

 We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do,
 We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.
 We fought the bear before, and while we’re Britain’s true,
 The Russians will not have Constantinople. 

This was a song written by GW Hunt and first sung by MacDermott to great acclaim in 1877. Russia had declared war on Turkey, and Disraeli’s Conservatives were backing the Turkish and threatening to launch a war against Russia.

The Tories, staunch defenders of the British Empire, backed the Turks hoping to block Russian attempts at imperial expansion. The Liberal Party and most of the organised left, opposed any military action, and tended to be anti-Turkish as a result of “the Bulgarian atrocities of 1876” in which thousands of Bulgarian Christians were massacred by Turkish troops.

This was the context in which The Jingo Song was hugely successful – it was one of a number of patriotic, pro Empire songs that featured heavily in Music Hall repertoire from the 1870s on and off until the First World War (to get a flavour of pro-war songs in the lead up to 1914, take a look at the film Oh What a Lovely War!).

“Jingoism” became a by-word  for extreme nationalism – William Morris and others who opposed the war were attacked on the streets by right-wingers who were described by people from both sides of the argument as “jingoists”.

It would be going too far, as some authors do, to say that the Music Halls backed the Tories and their war-mongering in the 1870s. However, the fact that so many songs of this type were written in this period must mean that they were reasonably popular with the largely working-class and lower-middle-class audiences in the Halls.

That said, we need to be careful: we don’t always know how the songs were sung, and how audiences responded to them, and we can’t assume that these jingoistic songs represent in a straightforward way the views of the audiences. If you look at the repertoire of MacDermott and other “pro Empire” singers, jingoistic songs formed only a small part of their repertoire – people were not descending on the Halls to listen to entire evenings of pro Empire, pro-war songs.

The owners of the music halls were always desperate to appear respectable, and there is evidence that they consciously encouraged the singing of such songs with that in mind. (Reflecting an ongoing battle with respectable mainstream theatre and the censors).

Many figures on the left at the time, and in the Liberal anti-war movement, saw the Music Hall as downright reactionary. JE Hobson, a Liberal writer whose analysis of imperialism was highly influential at the time, provided a neat summary of this view in the introduction to his book The Psychology of Jingoism:

Among large sections of the middle and labouring classes, the Music Halls are a more potent educator than the church, the school, the political meeting, or even than the press. The [music hall] artiste conveys by song or recitation crude notions upon morals and politics, appealing by coarse humour or exaggerated pathos to the animal lusts of an audience stimulated by alcohol … The glorification of brute force and an ignorant contempt for foreigners … make the music hall a very serviceable engine for generating military passion.

The language here (crude notions … coarse humour … Animal lusts ..stimulated by alcohol … glorification of brute force … ignorant)  no doubt reflects a  deeply held snobbishness about the lower classes, but it’s important not to ignore that for some on the left of the political spectrum as it existed at the time, there was an equally deeply held suspicion that Halls were a mechanism for whipping up war fever amongst the lower classes.

So finally, back to the middle-class, Fabian folksong collectors of the late 19^th and early 20^th century that were so keen to keep Music Hall songs out of their collections. Is it possible that it didn’t just represent a snobbishness about the musical tastes of the urban working class, but additionally reflected a dislike of crude Jingoism?? [I hope to investigate further..]

Sources:

• Russell: Popular Music
• EP Thompson: William Morris
• JE Hobson: Psychology of Jingoism

Sources:

Lyrics: monologues.co.uk

Last Updated on January 11, 2021 by John Baxter | Published: January 4, 2020