Students: Hail to Thee– Er … Da Di Da

A bunch of alums were whooping it up in a highway-side saloon, toasting Stanford’s football victory over Cal, when a young old grad called for the Stanford hymn. “How does it go?” someone asked. “From the … something . . . something …” a voice began. “Foothills? Mountains?” someone suggested. Others dimly recalled “in the sunset fire” and “raise our voices singing,” until at length a young wife bravely quavered:

From the rolling foothills rise To the mountains higher, When at east the Coast Range lies In the sunset fire . . .

Then she too expired, peering into her glass and lamely saying, “It certainly makes you want to cheer.” In the touching silence, her husband exclaimed: “Let’s drink to the roaring foothills and the hell with the hymn.”

Take the Dame. Across the land this football season, the great American college song has become the great American mumble. In a day when Hail to Thee, Oh Fink might best express “school spirit,” the old Alma Mater idea seems “too hot-rocket” to kids unwilling to give “that kind of allegiance just to a college.” Dissenters refuse to rise and sing because “your blanket falls off.” Princeton hearts pound at Old Nassau, but Princeton mouths go da di da. Even Georgia Tech’s “ramblin’ wrecks” sing to the Alma Mater in a vast hum, as of bees. South Benders “cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame,” but the sacred second line comes out, “You take the Notre, I’ll take the Dame.”

None of this means that “learn, learn, learn” is about to supplant “fight, fight, fight” on U.S. campuses. From Anchors Aweigh to All Hail Alaska, the college song is still uniquely American. Britons save their tears for school songs like Harrow’s Forty Years On. Oxbridge has s no official songs whatever. Germans I and Frenchmen sing of beer and wine.

Only Canadians echo American senti-| ments. “This U. is our U.,” chants Western Ontario, and McGill apologetically proclaims, “Great our affection, though feeble our lays.”

Hills & Vales. The American Alma Mater goes back to 1836, when the Unitarian author of Fair Harvard stole the Irish ditty Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms. Before World War I, Yale lifted Germany’s patriotic Die Wacht am Rhein for its own Bright College Years. Harvard mined the Marseillaise for On to Victory, and Columbia hitched Stand Columbia to Deutschland über Alles.

Some revered anthems began as jokes —for example, The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You, born in 1903 when Carry Nation visited Austin to smash up a saloon near the University of Texas. Warning his lads not to “cheer this poor deluded woman,” President William L. Prather begged them to remember that “the eyes of Texas are upon you.” In barely two years, the resulting gag song (to I’ve Been Working on the Railroad) was sufficiently solemnized to be sung at Prather’s funeral.

Plagiarism and the obligatory reference to real estate—a hill, river, valley or prairie—were flawlessly blended in one of the few compelling Alma Maters, Cornell’s Far Above Cayuga’s Waters, which comes from Annie Lisle, a sugary Civil War ballad. Cornell’s anthem in turn has been stolen by at least 13 other colleges, from Syracuse (Where the Vale of Onondaga) to Clemson (Where the Blue Ridge Yawns Its Greatness), and hundreds of high schools. Dartmouth was blessed with Poet Richard Hovey (’85), who gave his college rich, original songs like Men of Dartmouth: “Give a rouse, give a rouse, with a will!”

Football’s “fight songs” are less memorable. Some thrive on mindless lyrics, such as U.S.C.’s “Wamp, wamp, wheedy, wheedy, wamp, wamp.” Others boast punchy tunes, such as Yale’s canine (by Cole Porter, ’13) “Bulldog! Bulldog! Bow wow wow. Eli Yale.” Atavists safely seated in the stands adore the feline fury of the Princeton tiger’s roar:

Crash through the line of blue And send the backs on ’round the end, Fight, fight, for every yard, Princeton’s honor to defend—rah,rah, rah.

Who Loves Ya? But the anthem is in trouble. It ranges from gooey poesy to funeral-dirge music to forced rhyming (“I love you, Arizona/ I’m mighty glad to know you”). Says one girl of the anthem that the University of Chicago calls Alma Mater: “No one knows it—it’s really out.” Three decades after the Gershwin brothers wrote Strike Up the Band for U.C.L.A., only the melody lingers on. While singing for such eminences as Arnold Toynbee last year, Rice students were embarrassed by their go-go anthem (“All for Rice’s honor/ We will fight on”). They wrote a new one with music by Sibelius and words that no one remembers.

Still, nothing can down good tunes—On Wisconsin, Notre Dame’s Victory March, Yale’s Whiffenpoof Song (with words adapted from a Kipling ballad). And almost as enduring is the song that kids a rival school. Both Houston and Rice hector Texas A. & M. (to Battle Hymn of the Republic):

Mine eyes have seen the milking of

the Texas Aggie cow,

Mine ears have heard the squealing

of the Texas Aggie sow . . .

But more fashionable these days is self-kidding, as in a parody of Stanford’s fight song:

Sons of the wealthy few

Fight for your Alma Mater.

Fight for the dame with the social name,

Oil wells will see you through . . .

Or the satire of former Harvard Mathematician Tom Lehrer:

Fight fiercely, Harvard,

Demonstrate to them our skill.

Albeit they possess the might

Nonetheless, we have the will.

How we will celebrate our victory,

We shall invite the whole team up for

tea (how jolly!)

Hurl that spheroid down the field,

And fight, fight, fight.