Many people know that Francis Scott Key wrote the words to the “Star Spangled Banner” while being held captive by the near Baltimore, MD, but did you know the tune is an old British drinking song?
While Key watched a battle between the English and the Americans, he was inspired to write a poem on the back of a letter he had kept in his pocket. At twilight on September 16, he was released in Baltimore, where he finished the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel. He entitled it “Defence of Fort McHenry.”
Key gave the poem to his brother-in-law, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson, who saw that the words fit the popular melody “To Anacreon in Heaven”, an old British drinking song from the mid-1760s. Nicholson took the poem to a printer in Baltimore, who anonymously printed copies of it—the song’s first known printing—on September 17. Tow copies still survive.