Those creepy hyper patriotic gatherings.

Gene Weingarten from the Washington Post seems to think that only “ladies who are direct descendants of Cotton Mather, or…secret Masonic initiation rites involving men wearing aprons” sing the second stanza of the Star Spangled Banner.

It would be an interesting rant to rail on the guy for deciding to use Masonry in his description of which “creepy hyper patriotic gatherings” sing the added lines, but it does make for an interesting read.  Maybe he was thinking of the Tea Partiers or something?

So, just for the record, Secret Masonic initiation Rites don’t sing the second stanza either…  even if there are a few Masonic/Patriot reinactment groups out there.

Green Mountain Chapter, National Sojourners from http://www.vtfreemasons.org/photoalbum/pawin06.asp

For the record, this is the full version…  And yeah, maybe Masonic blogs post the whole thing… just for the record.

Maybe he was thinking of the Krista Branch ” I am America” listening audience?

An interesting couple of facts, the song actually has 4 stanza’s and was written to the tune of a popular British drinking song for the Anacreontic Society, a popular gentlemen’s club of amateur musicians in London, so it goes in Wikipedia. They have an interetsing song that goes along with their name called The Anacreontic Song which goes something like this…

But back to the Star Spangled Banner, should you want to sing all 4 stanzas, the lyrics are:

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation.
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

I wonder how much poor Christina Aguilera would of missed that mark.