The Anthems Podcast explores the fascinating story behind "The Song of the Falklands," a unique anthem reflecting the identity and emotions of the Falkland Islands. Host Patrick delves into the complexity of the islands' history, highlighting the interplay between their colonial past and the residents' desire for autonomy. The episode reveals the curious ambiguity surrounding the song's authorship, centering on the enigmatic figure of Christopher Lanham, whose existence is shrouded in mystery. Listeners are treated to a vivid portrayal of the Falkland Islands’ natural beauty, as the song captures themes of homesickness and nostalgia, resonating with the deep emotional connection of its people to their homeland. With insights into the local culture and the adorable penguin population, this episode offers a rich tapestry of history and sentiment, inviting listeners to appreciate the Falklands beyond their geopolitical significance.

1. https://nationalanthems.info/fk.htm 
2. https://web.archive.org/web/20150628065803/http://www.diariobae.com/notas/50883-exlegislador-britanico-escribio-un-himno-para-las-malvinas.html 
3. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/great-wall-of-china-even-longer-than-previously-thought-1.1263111 
4. https://library.humanitybook.com/government/facts/Falkland-Islands (general facts)
5. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Malvinas_the_South_Georgias_and_the/sGAJSfxqd7oC?hl=en 
6. https://appventions.com/world-facts/falkland-islands-islas-malvinas 
7. https://www.getamap.net/about/falkland_islands_(_islas_malvinas_)_[_united_kingdom_]/government.html 
8. Goebel, Julius. La Pugna por las Islas Malvinas. Yale University Press.
9. https://es-academic.com/dic.nsf/eswiki/1102414 
10. https://www.indexmundi.com/falkland_islands_(islas_malvinas)/national_anthem.html 
11. https://www.lelongweekend.com/guide-falkland-islands-penguins/ 
12. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/microplate 
13. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/falkland-islands-islas-malvinas/ 
14. https://depositsmag.com/2016/12/29/the-geology-of-the-falkland-islands/ 
15. https://web.archive.org/web/20150628065803/http://www.diariobae.com/notas/50883-exlegislador-britanico-escribio-un-himno-para-las-malvinas.html
16. https://falklands-southatlantic.com/camp%20education.html
17. https://www.countryreports.org/country/FalklandIslands/nationalsymbols.htm 
18. https://laws.gov.gs/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/1932.pdf Pg. 3
19. https://laws.gov.gs/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/1935.pdf Pg. 17
20. https://www.lahc.net/apps/jobs/show_job.jsp?REC_ID=45037 
21. https://nationalarchives.gov.fk/ 
22. https://falklandsconservation.com/penguins/ 
23. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1413849/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl 
24. https://web.archive.org/web/20180301165637/http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/ConFactFile.64/HMS-Beagle.html
25. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/penguin-population-by-country

Foreign hello and welcome to the Anthems Podcast. I'm Patrick and I'm here to tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation. Today.

We we are going to need to take the fast car because we've got 13,275 miles to drive to our next country. That is 21,364 kilometers, which is a fun coincidence because that is just a 100 more than the Great Wall of China.

But that's mostly information confirming what we know to be true. China is enormous in size and population.

The People's Republic is sort of a study in opposites from today's country because less people live there than work for my employer in just the state that I live in, and it is physically smaller than all but two of the states in the us. If you knew that meant we were going to the Falkland Islands, then I suspect you might be reading my correspondence.

We're here because I have, as of this release, been doing a monthly podcast for two full calendar years.

Honestly, it feels like a medium sized deal and at least I have enjoyed the time spent getting around in the world with you in trips of varying length.

When I first started the show, the entire process was an experiment, which meant that I got to learn a bunch of new stuff and new ways to implement old knowledge. This was and continues to be especially true about writing the thing.

The narrative, regardless of historical context of a specific song, was deliberately something way outside of my typical line of inquiry or work.

So I tried some stuff out, kept some of what I learned there, tossed more, and tried to start with the Falkland Islands, but clearly I did not for reasons that right now would be too much of a spoiler. But I have got my feet under me with the show as far as format goes and knowing how to write one for the most part.

So it's time to circle back and tell you about the anthem that first piqued my interest after deciding to get going. The Song of the Falklands.

This is a story that had me start and stop many times, obviously because it was a tricky thing to parse out a satisfying narrative for. It's different as all the episodes have been, and yet another in my blank slate series.

So prepare to be surprised by the story of a song regarding the southernmost country that we've been to. Also, I have previously warned you that some of these songs are rather quite long or they're going to feel that way anyway.

The Song of the Falklands is not one of those, so prepare your ears for about A minute of anthem in.

My heart There far away where the wind from the horn up and wonders and flies where the cow moves and swells Till the wind and the and penguins sit down from the lonely hillside those isles of the sea are calling to me Smell of the campfire a dear memory Though far I may roam Someday I'll come home to the island of Falkland, the islands of the sea.

My first impression was to think, well, that's a bit different. But I like it and was glad to be presented with something refreshing again. Simple and distinct isn't what you get in many national anthems.

This is a very local song, which is something that I really like in an anthem because they ought to feel like the country that they represent. Some of them don't sound all that local due to the specifics of history, but that doesn't mean that non local anthems are bad songs.

Good and bad music is mostly a subjective idea because musical taste can't be dictated. But I have neither the time nor the desire to get on that soapbox because we need to find out what where these penguins the anthem mentions are.

The Falklands are one of the easier countries for me to pin down on the map. I'll assume that we can all find South America.

So from there locate the southernmost point and about 480 kilometers, or 300 miles to the east of the Patagonian coast are the Falkland Islands. They're named after the Falkland Sound, which is in between the two largest of them.

It will likely be named the Falkland Islands in English for a long time, but that's human timescale stuff on a geologic time scale. This archipelago is hanging out near Cape Horn for like a moment because of this episode's geology term microplates.

These are small, mostly rigid areas of crust that are less than a million square miles in size. They sit in like sort of in between major plate boundaries and they rotate independently and are able to move along them in certain cases.

The Falkland Islands are geologically interesting because the rocks there are nothing like the ones in mainland South America and instead are similar to the southern part of Africa. Evidence for this was noticed but not recognized by a few people, including Charles Darwin.

So until about 300 million years ago, the supercontinent Gondwana or something, the islands were butted up to the bottom of Africa.

And then when the continents separated out, the microplate that the islands were on did a slow 180 degree spin while waiting for me to be around to talk about a song. So yeah, I know the national anthem of the Falkland Islands is officially God Save the King.

Scotland's is too, and so are all the other countries in the Commonwealth. And yes, I know that the Falkland Islands are very close to not a country at all. So why this place?

The answer has some mild spoilers for the rest of the episode, so Skip ahead like 10 or 15 seconds if you don't want to hear them.

Some of the answer has spoilers anyway, because part one is really that God Save the King can only have one episode or my show is gonna be really even more boring than it already is.

What we've got in the Falkland Islands is a place where the people rejected Argentina and accepted England, but actually I think don't want to be in either and really want to be Falklanders. Britain was the option that allowed them to not substantially change their lives, so they get a show.

Plus, this is technically part of the Colonialism series, even though this is not a story that involves it collapsing.

Really though, once I found out about all the penguins there, I wanted to talk about them because penguins are adorable and if I don't do an episode, I don't get to tell you about them. So also in this note, you're going to hear about birds.

The penguins of the Falkland Islands are, at least in this podcaster's mind, the unofficial mascots. They are five different species. The King, Gentoo, Rockhopper, the Magellanic, and occasionally the Macaroni Penguin.

It's not the most species in one country. New Zealand has that title, but it is the fifth, so I guess that's pretty cool in terms of numbers.

What that means is there are like a million of them there during the summer, and that seems like so many birds. With no natural predators on the islands, it's a perfect place for them to nest.

It's very picturesque, but it is important part of the ecosystem and a driver of ecotourism. Sorry for the diversion, but I read so much about the Falcon penguins that I had to put something in the show. Moving on.

Normally, the possible inroads to the narrative are found along a timeline of unmanageable length. Here, though, the Falkland Islands reached their current hangout and then people mostly left the place to the birds.

There is some evidence that the capable seafarers of old that used to live on the modern Argentinian coast used some of the islands as a waypoint. But it's a near certainty that there were no long term settlements there.

It's likely that a ship in Magellan's first circumnavigation of the planet spotted it, but incorrectly noted the location. Because we had no idea how to measure longitude back then, because we didn't have chronometers.

The next year, British Captain John Byron came along and landed on Falkland west and claimed the islands for Britain on the grounds of prior discovery.

And unbelievably, yet another Captain John Re established the settlement to Egmont. There were a lot of these guys in England.

After the British and the French were gone, it did not take Argentina very long to try and establish sovereignty over the Falklands. At the time, Argentina was known as the United Provinces of the River Plate.

They did not kill them, but they took them off of the islands and dumped them in Argentina, except for like 20 people that they couldn't find because they were out in the wilderness. And it was turned into a penal colony colony by the government in Buenos Aires.

The Argentinian major there protested, but he had no soldiers, so he just left.

Charles Darwin made a couple of visits, and that put pressure on the British government to formally colonize the place.

And from there we have another 60 or so years of history that is interesting in its own right, but once we've gotten to the establishment of the colonial government, it's not all that super relevant to what we're talking about in this story. After all, the government that was set into the place at that time is essentially what is happening there today.

So we are going to do a time jump about 60 years forward to the turn of the 20th century, a stop that is usually where I get to peel off and talk about the person that either wrote the words or the music, which I'm gonna do, but in a kind of different way than we have in past shows. I'm doing it for the reason I could not write the episode as the first one.

You see, the Falkland Islands and the Song of the Falklands are especially interesting to me because while both the song and the country definitely exist, I'm not sure about the supposed author of the song.

That shouldn't be a big surprise that there's not a lot of information because if you've been listening to any of the show, you'll know that there's a light historical footprint of normal people. And most of these people that wrote anthems are normal people like us.

But this one is especially odd and it threw me for a loop when I, you know, as my first effort. Christopher Lanham was supposedly a British school teacher from the Hampshires. It's something called a ceremonial county in southern England.

He is said to have taken a job on the Falkland Islands as a traveling teacher.

His song became the unofficial anthem of the islands. And as said, I'm not actually sure Christopher wrote this. The Internet is pretty sure it was him though.

I talked to the person that wrote the Wikipedia page for the Song of the Falklands because they and the few sources I could find do agree that Christopher wrote it. They also agree that there is very little information out in the world about him. In fact, it's so little that it is effectively nothing.

And they covered the most ridiculously minutia in only the way that an old timey local journal could. So Christopher is a Ghost into the 30s. As far as what me and some fairly dedicated local historians can find.

However, there is a JC Lanham that was on the islands in the correct period of time. He was the right age, he made some trips back and forth to England, and he was actually a traveling teacher.

I'm pretty sure that he is the only Lanham that was on the islands in the correct time frame. But the sources and the people I spoke to about this anthem are all sure that this is not the same guy.

And I can't confirm any of this because there are no birth records in the UK for him or Christopher Lanham that I can access or that anyone who I have talked to has been able to find.

So both of these guys probably exist and they seem to overlap in an interesting enough way where I'm actually suspicious that they're the same person. I can confirm none of that suspicion, though. And infuriatingly enough, I also cannot deny the suspicions that I have.

So that is the vague nature of history, and it infuriates me. Being unsure about the timeline of an anthem. Writer's life is not anything new here. 24 episodes in, though, and is super real.

Clear picture would be more out of the norm. Actually. That also means that we have another anthem where the process of picking that particular song is kind of lost to the mist.

The winner of that contest was a completely different guy and a completely different song. I can find reference to this song in literally just that one place. And as such, I'm hesitant to weigh it too heavily, but it does cloud things more.

So Charles Hobley's words, set to music by Sister Veroni, are called the furthest south.

They won't get more than this sentence in the show, and that is a shame because it would have been one of the few where a woman composer or writer was involved. But we also shouldn't forget that the Falkland Islands are claimed by Argentina.

Even though I am a little confused about the anthem and the country, as opposed to just completely ignorant of it, I can say that we've got the song and I'm gonna tell you about it. Musically speaking, this could be the work of pretty much any patriotic folk singer. And it is simple enough song that I could play it on the banjo.

It's pretty enough, though, and kind of reminds me of a sea shanty. At least it does in the single version of the song that I could find that included the lyrics. It's got sort of a lilting rhythm to it.

I'm completely unsure of the writer's intention with the thing, though, because I was not able to find literally any information regarding that. Everything I'm writing here is based on me having someone that actually paid attention in ear training. Transcribe the music for me.

So keep your salt handy. And if you can correct me, you can do that through the Methods that I will tell you about at the end of the show.

Anyway, despite being written as a folk song wherein a man is longing for a place that he took a really cool work trip to, the Song of the Falklands checks off a bunch of my anthem boxes. We've got a straightforward and singable progression.

It's in 4 4, so it's hard to get lost in while lending to the possibility for it being played march like. And the chorus rounds out more than deviates from the main song. It's not very jarring.

Like I said after I played it, this song reminds me most of Flower of Scotland because it's the other unexpected anthem that I have covered on the show. From a lyrical standpoint, we've got a song with three verses of four lines with the rhyme scheme aabb.

Each verse is followed by a repeat refrain, also with four lines, but with the rhyme scheme aaba. Again, it's basically a folk song, but in reading about it, I did learn that the verse chorus structure is called strophic. That's S T R O P H I C.

So that's interesting new information for me. Other than that, I can't say too much about the anthem from a structural standpoint. It's sort of basic.

So I'm going to read it out now and I will read the chorus, just the first of its three appearances. I will note where the other two are, though, and this time I'm going to read it in Russian to keep things kind of fresh and confuse you. I'm kidding.

I only speak English and a little bit of Spanish, so I will read this in the original English.

In my heart there's a call for the isles far away where the wind from the horn often wanders at play where the kelp moves and sways to the wind and the tide and penguins troop down from the lonely hillside those isles of the sea are calling to me the smell of the campfire is a dear memory Though far I may roam Some day I'll come home to the islands the Falklands, the isles of the sea There's a camphouse down yonder I'm longing to see Though it's no gilded palace it's there I would be Just to be there I would race o'er the foam from that lone house so far is my own sweet home and then you hear the chorus again.

Now we're off to the Falklands so wild and so free where there's tussock and kelp and the red diddle dee and the wild rugged beauty that Thrills More than Me is bred in the bones on the isles of the sea. And then we hear the chorus a final time.

So the Song of the Falcons is one of the songs that is very clearly not written as an anthem, and it sounds different from most of them. Despite that, we get a song that fits well for the purpose and somehow the themes of homesickness, nostalgia, along with rugged beauty kind of work.

The song was written by someone with a deep emotional connection to the Falklands, even though I can't say for absolute certain who it was. There is a nice interplay between personal memories and recollections of natural character. It gets across the yearning to return to a beloved place.

It's kind of a mixture of wistful longing and celebration that was spurred on by the writer very clearly missing a place that holds a special spot in their heart. There is a certain universality that comes with that, though. It makes sense as an anthem, even though if it's unconventional.

The song opens by painting a vivid portrait of the Falkland Islands by focusing on the landscape and the emotional connection to the region.

The first verse establishes the setting with vivid imagery of the wind, tide, kelp and of course, the penguins to present a sense of the island's beauty and isolation. They're trying to convey their love for the remote charm, emphasizing respect for nature's power and splendor.

This sets the stage for a deeply personal song. Despite not sounding like a typical anthem, diverse does check off some of the boxes that we need to see.

Nature and longing strongly get represented in many anthems and serving as a source of national pride. In the second verse, the focus shifts inward, drawing on the speaker's personal memory of the island.

This is far less typical in an anthem, and they generally focus out into a population of people.

It makes sense to me because the song that is a national symbol should make at least a perfunctory attempt at being a song for all of the people that live there. I would think the way the writer describes the campfire and the camphouse evoke nostalgia and try to ground the piece in an emotional way.

They are clearly supposed to be seen as symbols of comfort and and belonging, trying to transform the rugged landscape into a cherished home.

By intertwining the grandeur of the islands with tender recollections, the verse creates a poignant bridge between the external world and the speaker's inner monologue. It's pretty good songwriting, but I find it to be the least anthem like part of the song.

The emotional arc of the song crescendos in the third verse, where the island's untamed beauty is celebrated with a triumphant tone. It brings us right back into the more typical anthem, fair of extolling the natural wonders of a nation.

While I did know that kelp is kind of a seagrass and that some kinds are delicious, tussock and red diddle dee are new terms. Tussock grass is a grass that grows in clumps and is common in arctic climates, or in this case very nearly Antarctic ones.

Red diddle dee is also known as red crowberry and is a South American native plant that looks like a green evergreen bush with little red berries.

The other two lines of the verse continue to cement the rugged beauty of the islands as their best feature, and finally to hammer home what the place means to the people that love it. Lines like the last one in the verse make it make sense that a folk song could become an anthem. Really, though, the refrain is what does that?

In my opinion, it ties the lyrics together with the themes of longing and the repetition of Someday I'll come home to underscore the writer's determination. The love for the homeland, born or adopted, is powerful stuff and exactly the sentiment you would want in a song about a nation.

So here I am, 24 episodes into a massive project to learn about all of the anthems in a world where countries are actively forming and failing and the literal land is slowly repositioning itself.

Of course, I'm more concerned with the geopolitical than the geological, in most cases because of timescales, but it's important I cede that all is change eventually.

Unfortunately, the change that happens with respect to the amount of information available about history is usually a reduction that only happens after we have reached peak available information, though, and with the Song of the Falklands, it's not a sure bet that we've got there yet.

I found an active community of enthusiastic amateur and professional historians that are trying to find out everything about the islands and by extension have enabled me to tell you a story about it that is as cohesive as I managed to make it. It's a journey to learn about this one, and it's an episode that has shown me that the mundane and exciting are not always mutually exclusive things.

This one was tricky for me to learn, but but my intention is already pointed at another place to learn about. So on to the credits. The writing, recording and production for the show are done by me. I wrote and played the theme music.

The music was used by me with my permission unless otherwise noted.

The anthems I play are public domain or some other equivalently free license or a thing that I got permission to play or have made a good faith effort to get permission to play. This time the audio's owner is a mystery.

I did try to find out who recorded this, but there is nothing on the Internet that I can get to about it other than the song as usual. Please let me know if you know differently.

You should follow me on Facebook because when I do post it's a post about the show and if you see those posts you can share those posts. That would help me with trying to get the episode out onto whatever platform I can with the hashtag anthemspod.

So it would be super cool if you hashtag the post or something like that. And maybe it would mean that more funding goes to Penguin Ecotourism. As usual.

Or better still, leave me a review wherever you can so that more people hear me or give me a rating on your podcast app. Same reason. It really helps.

Maybe listening to an episode will lead you to walking with your head down, deep in thought, and the person that you bump into is doing exactly the same thing. Then the excited conversation you have about this very episode leads to passersby becoming new listeners.

But even if the only thing that happens is that you listen to another one. Thanks. So off we go. SA.