James Thomson’s poem Rule, Britannia was set to music in 1740 by Thomas Arne, and has, in one form or another, been popular with the British people ever since; most notably, it is usually taken for a canter during the last night of the Promenade Concerts in the Albert Hall. See the Wikipedia article for more detail.

I can’t now remember what possessed me to learn this piece of music, but, at my request, my tutor wrote it out on some blank piano-stave paper. I must have learned it well if my ability to regurgitate it is any gauge, having long since lost that music manuscript. It is a useful piece of music for annoying Americans with on Independence Day, not that many of them are aware of the significance of the tune. This arrangement is a fairly close representation of the way I play it. Adjust it to suit your taste.

Other tunes in this series can be found listed on the Toots of the Whistle page of the Guide.

This abc-rendition is arranged for the pennywhistle, tuned to the key of D. Copy and paste the abc-code, shown below, into your own text file and then process the file using the abc-tool of your choice. Free abc utilities are available that will convert the code to a MIDI file, to Adobe PostScript, and to Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) suitable for printing the sheet music. As an alternative, it is possible to read the abc-code direct and play it on your favourite instrument.