Perhaps the one rallying point for all Britons is that their
songs in America have been songs of exile. The most familiar of them
represents the Irishman with his bundle bound for Philadelphia, or the
Englishman whistling 'Falmouth is a fine town' as he walks down the
street of Baltimore, or the Scotsman rising to that high note not
unworthy of the waters of Babylon.
But still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
So strong is such a tradition that later generations will dream of what
they have never seen. The nationalism is most intense where the nation
is only a name. Irish American is more Irish than Irish. The English
colonial loyalist is more loyal than an Englishman. The loves and
hatreds harden in that hard air under those clear skies of the western
world. They are unsoftened by all internal doubts and criticisms that come
from being on the spot.
-William Cobbett (1925)
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