the discipline of meter 119
taught to stand at “attention,” and to pace according to different musical time.
Below are two examples from Vassey’s book:
Gun Drill (for boys)
We shall be soldiers Enter boys with guns.
With our guns,
We’ll show you how we fight, Then follows a gun-drill, accompanied
And guard our Queen by some bright air on piano
And country dear,
For England’s good is might. March off to music.Scarf Drill (for girls)
Oh, see our pretty Enter girls with coloured scarves
Coloured scarves,
We hold them at each end;
We’ll dance, and sing, Scarf drill follows
And show you all
How easily we bend. March off to music.We see here a progression from recitation to exercise class in the curricu-
lum of the day, from the theme of Davis’s “she is a rich and rare land” to the
marching accompaniment of “we shall be soldiers with our guns.” Military
drills were often accompanied by patriotic songs like “God Save the Queen.”
Students marched to create the form of a flag, particularly for Empire Day
(with the girls in one color and the boys in another) or to create other pa-
triotic formations—an anchor to represent England’s nautical prowess,
for example.
What has gone unremarked about the drill movement and the subsequent
popularity of Empire Day was the prominence of poetic recitation. In The Vic-
torian and Edwardian Schoolchild, Pamela Horn outlines how patriotic po-
etry and imperial nostalgia were joined with the celebration of Empire Day.^32
A typically Edwardian phenomenon, Empire Day ceremonies spread to over
half of the state-funded schools by 1907. The celebrations included hoisting
and saluting the Union flag and singing the national anthem and other patri-
otic songs. Addresses were given to the children by visiting speakers on the
duties of British citizenship and upon some aspect of the empire. Recitation
of a poem illustrative of “heroic duty and self-sacrifice on behalf of the na-
tion” followed. Proceedings concluded with a rendering of Rudyard Kipling’s
“Recessional,” which, as Lootens points out, had entered not only the Oxford
Book of English Verse but also the hymn book of the Church of England by
1901.^33 Kipling composed “Recessional” for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee
in 1897, and it was recited along with the national anthem: