One of the most striking national anthems I know is Poland’s Mazurek Dąbrowskiego. Great therefore was my surprise just now when I thought I heard it somewhere but Draga told me it was the national anthem of Yugoslavia. Of course I posed a wager, which means that I’ll be doing the dishes for the rest of the month (I was already doing the dishes for the rest of the week for my foolish insisting that Total Eclipse Of The Heart was by Stevie Nicks).
It appears that the man who wrote the song Hej Sloveni (Hey Slavs) in 1834, the priest Samuel Tomášik, indeed based it on Mazurek Dąbrowskiego, which stems from 1797. Neither Poland nor Yugoslavia existed at the time but Poland adopted Mazurek Dąbrowskiego in 1926 as the national anthem and Yugoslavia did so with Hej Sloveni in 1943.
What a small world…
Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Danbrowsky’s Mazurek; Polish national anthem)
Hej Sloveni (Hey Slavs; Yugoslavian national anthem)
Mazurek Dąbrowskiego Lyrics:
Poland has not perished yet
So long as we still live
That which alien force has seized
We at sabrepoint shall retrieve
March, march, Dąbrowski
From Italy to Poland
Under thy command
Let us now rejoin the nation
Cross the Vistula and Warta
And Poles we shall be
We've been shown by Bonaparte
Ways to victory
March, march...
Like Czarniecki to Poznań
After Swedish occupation,
To rescue our homeland
We shall return by sea
March, march...
Father, in tears
Says to his Basia
Just listen, it seems that our people
Are beating the drums
March, march...
Hej Sloveni Lyrics:
Hey, Slavs, it still lives
the word (spirit) of our grandfathers
As long as the heart of their sons
beats for our nation.
It lives, it lives the Slavic spirit,
It will live for centuries!
Vainly threatens the abyss of Hell
and the fire of the thunder.
Let everything above us now
be shattered by a storm wind (Bura).
The cliff cracks, the oak breaks,
Let the earth quake.
We stand firmly
like the mountains,
Damned be the traitor
of his homeland!
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