Welsh band hit right note for Scotland despite defeat

SCOTLAND'S rugby team can take great heart from their performance at the Millennium Stadium but, if they wish to sustain that improvement, it will be vital to identify the factors that contributed to it, the first of these being the playing of the national anthem.

In Cardiff, Flower of Scotland was played with a refreshing degree of jauntiness, and this in itself may have put an extra spring in Scottish steps.

But more significantly, the Welsh band played the right notes, whereas the pipe band at Murrayfield have been adulterating Flower of Scotland for some time now by sharpening the leading note ('and sent him homeward, to think again').

That note is meant to be a full tone below the tonic, or key-note, giving the tune its modal character.

This is not just a matter of musical pedantry – that note is the one with the emotive impact, the one that says "don't mess with us", the one that evokes Hibernian immovability and bloody-mindedness.

Sharpen that note a semitone, and we're transported to a nineteenth century English drawing room, where some quavering, flat-chested mezzo-soprano is regaling us with diatonically emasculated songs of the Highlands.

Sharpen that note, and it opens a chink in the song's armoured resolve, weakens a link in the chain of the melody.

Sharpen it, and the effect is as if the All Blacks were to end the haka in a limp-wristed, Frank Spencer-ish pose.

This should be the first item on Andy Robinson's clipboard as the squad prepare for their next game: the anthem – do we plump for a note of defiance, or persist with a note of apology?

JONATHAN REID

Whitby

North Yorkshire

National side punished for breaking simple rules

I have followed the fortunes of Scotland's national rugby team with an unbridled passion for over 60 years, initially as a schoolboy attending a small prep school near Huntly and currently as a patron of a pub in central Toronto.

Never have I been so demoralised as I was during the last 10 minutes of Scotland's encounter with Wales at Millennium Stadium.

In the future should the Scots have the good fortune to be 14 points ahead with less than 10 minutes to go there are at least three basic disciplines to be instantly embraced. They are:

1 No dumb penalties

2 No missed tackles

3 No yellow cards

Had these disciplines been applied instead of ignored, the final score would have been 24-10 and I and my fellow Scots in a pub 2700 miles away would have been able to enjoy our post-game pints with the relish of the victorious underdog.

It was not to be.

IAN R. A. MacMILLAN

Toronto Canada