THE “RED FLAG.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19530, 13 July 1925, Page 8

THE “RED FLAG.”

ITS AUTHOR. The author of the words of “ The Red Flag” is alive and kicking against Mr MacDonald’s vigorous criticism of what Mr Shaw long ago dismissed as “the funeral march of a fried eel” (says the Manchester Guardian). Mr Jim Connell, whose little poem is married to music so far beneath it, appears in “Who’s Who.’ He is there described as “educated under a hedge for a few weeks. Has been a sheep farmer, dock labourer, navvy, railwayman, draper, journal list, lawyer (of a sort), and all the time «. poacher.” In the next issue he may add to this varied list, “critic of ‘J.R.M.,’ ” for he has confided to the Morning Post (a curious recipient of confidences from one Socialist about another) that he has known Mr MacDonald for 30 years, and that he has never yet had any proof that tho ex-Prime Minister has the “slightest real appreciation of Robert-Burns.” And Mr Connell is an Irishman! He wrote his song, he says, for the tune of “The White Cockade,” a Jacobite air once very popular in Ireland. But the publishers harnessed what he had written to the now familiar dirge. This was originally a Roman Catholic hymn which tbe Reformation ruled out. It was then changed by the German peasants into a folk-song, “Tannenbaum.” A Federal soldier singing this on the Potomac during the American Civil War caused the enemy lines to join in, and ever since the tune has been known as “Maryland.” Mr Connell is still hoping that bis words will get their divorce and be united to their first love, “The White Cockade.”