JINGO BALLADS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4870, 3 July 1901, Page 4

JINGO BALLADS.

The death of Queen Victoria has rather interfered with the popularity of that excruciating composition ' The Soldiers of the Queen,' bat the ballad has had a vogue unequalled in the music halls since the days when Macdermott created a fu*o*e wifch Hn&fc'fe fatuous ditty — We don'i 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. That song gave birth to a nickname which promises to survive the memory of either vocalist or composer, and the ' Pall Mall Gazette ' goes so far as to declare it the most important political song of the last century, at any rate subsequently to the peace of 1815. It was in 1878 when feeling ran high 1 concerning the Rutsso-Turkish War that Macdermott made his great hit, ■ and even Cabinet Ministers might j have been seen in the stalls of the | music halls. Jingo ballads have had a good deal to do with the persistence of the Imperial spirit among the London crowds. Majuba brought a great crop of lyrics, and it was in those days that Miss Vesta Tilley used to inquire nightly ' When shall Old England be Herself once more?' After Tel-el-kebir, Mr Harry Eickards replied with ' We're not dead yet,'and then Charles Godfrey took the town by storm with 'Too late, too late to save him,' a Gordon ballad, and ' Fighting with the Gallant Fusiliers.' But there was really no sustained success in patriotic music until Mr Leslie Stuart's ' Soldiers of the Queen' came out. Mr Kipling's ' Absent-minded Beggar,' like Mr Pat Eafferty's ' What do you think of the Irish now ?' and Countess Russell's ' Bravo ! Dublin Fusiliers,' is already dead, and no song of conspicuous merit seems likely to take its place. The muic-balls ring for a night or two with songs like our' own ' John Bull, Junior ' and ' The Boerß have got my Daddy,' and one popular swinging chorus urges the public to ' Take the muzzle off the lion and let him have a go,' but < Soldiers of the Queen ' is the only patriotic ballad of recent yearß that can be compared in popularity to 'We don't want to fight,' and Mr Stuart's song is already out of fashion.