WASHINGTON — An advisory panel has made several recommendations to scrap or seriously alter Maryland’s state song.
The study panel’s six recommendations include replacing “Maryland, My Maryland,” written by James Ryder Randall, with a different song with the same title and tune but different lyrics; dropping the idea of having a state song in the first place, The Washington Post reports.
The current “Maryland, My Maryland” includes Civil War-era lyrics that exhort Maryland to jin the Confederacy, referring to President Abraham Lincoln as “the despot” and exulting, “Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum.”
It’s “the only state song that calls for the overthrow of government,” Sen. Ronald N. Young, D-Frederick, told The Post. “It’s just not appropriate … I’d just like a more uplifting song, one that is not so wrong.”
Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, tells The Post the idea is “political correctness run amok.”
Another panel recommendation: replacing it with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” seeing as how it was written by Marylander Francis Scott Key during the siege of Baltimore.
Virginia replaced “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” as its state song in 1997 due to several disparaging references to black people.
The lyrics to “Maryland, My Marlyand,” sung to the tune of “Lauriger Horatius” (also used in “O Tannenbaum”), are here.
