| Opinion, The Capital, 6/30/2015
Our say: Can we lift 'the despot's heel' of 'Maryland, My Maryland' already?
Symbols are mental shorthand for ideas and attitudes — the reason for eruptions of passion over such issues as whether a state should fly a Confederate flag on its capitol grounds or, for that matter, allow that flag on its license plates. (To restate our view: People have a First Amendment right to display that flag on their own persons or property, but the banner doesn't belong on government property.) Such arguments have a way of spreading as they die down.
Although some will broach the idea, we doubt there will be a serious effort to remove statues or erase inscriptions honoring state politicians who were either pro-slavery or pro-segregation. Ending government endorsement of offensive symbols is one thing, trying to enforce totalitarian-style selective amnesia is something else. It's healthier for Marylanders to grapple with, not ignore, the fact that much of the state's history is inextricably linked to slavery and segregation.
But there's one bit of symbolism that, as we've written before, we could live without. Do you know the full lyrics of our state song? Most Marylanders can hum the tune — after all, it's the beautiful folk melody best known as "O Tannenbaum." But most Marylanders don't know the words, or would rather not focus on them. There's a reason for that.
Written in 1861 by James Ryder Randall, a 22-year-old native of Baltimore teaching in Louisiana, the poem is an emotional plea for Maryland to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy. "The despot's heel is on thy shore" Randall starts — and the "despot" we're talking about is Abraham Lincoln, who is later referred to as a "tyrant" and a "Vandal." By the ninth stanza, Randall gets tired of the increasingly delirious symbolism ("Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,/Than crucifixion of the soul") and blurts out: "Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum!"
We haven't taken a survey of state songs. But Maryland must have the only one that refers to people living in other parts of the United States as "scum."
Maryland got along perfectly well without a state song until 1939, when it adopted "Maryland, My Maryland." It wouldn't be a desecration of the past to replace Randall's verses with something that wouldn't cause modern Marylanders to cringe, that could actually be sung by schoolchildren and wouldn't require the Naval Academy Glee Club, when it performs the song at the Preakness, to cherry-pick a verse that is just militaristic, not offensive.
Of course, Del. Pam Beidle, D-Linthicum, was ridiculed for raising this idea some years ago. In spite of the condescending brush-off she got from her fellow legislators, she was obviously right. Anyone who takes up the same cause will get a "Huzza" or two from us.
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