Welcome to Scottish Anthem
Over the past few years, there has been a real attempt to come up with an official Scottish National Anthem. To date, we still have no overall agreement and the debate goes on.
On this site are 13 anthems written with the express purpose of moving the debate ahead.
For each
anthem there are words and music which can be downloaded and printed plus an mp3 backing track.
Scottish National Anthem – the story so far
If Scotland gains full independence, there will be a definite need for an official national anthem. There can be no doubt about that. Even as things stand at present, we probably need one anyway sooner rather than later. It’s true that we have a couple of unofficial anthems
Flower of Scotland and
Scotland the Brave that are used for football, rugby and sporting events but at the end of the day we should only have one that serves as the officially recognized Scottish National Anthem. The concept of a
national anthem for any country is a surprisingly recent phenomenon. The earliest was the Dutch national anthem "Het Wilhelmus", written around 1570.
What a national anthem should be
- It should be easy to sing by anyone, not just trained singers
- It should have words that identify with the country
- It should have a strong simple melody that stirs the emotions and evokes the feeling of the country
What it shouldn’t be
- It shouldn’t be too long or too short
- It shouldn’t have a melody that is too difficult for people to sing
- It shouldn’t have words that are dated or can become dated
There would appear to be a lack of direction in choosing an anthem for Scotland and you only have to visit a few blog sites to see that the list of candidates is almost endless. I have, for years, felt that Scots Wha Hae with a more modern arrangement and words would make a very good anthem, especially considering the fact that Hey Tuttie Tattie is reputed to have been the tune that Robert the Bruce played at Bannockburn.
In 2006 I decided to do something about it so I wrote my new version of Scots Wha Hae for which I received a few favourable comments. However, around Christmas 2006, I received an email from an American lady suggesting there wasn’t a wide enough choice of original anthems to choose from so in January 2007 I wrote another 12 making the total 13 in all.
The 13 anthems on this website have been written with the express purpose of moving the debate ahead..
Thank you for visiting the site. I hope you can spare a few minutes to check out the anthems and give your views.