Governor Sir Cavendish Boyle writes a quartet of quatrains that, when set to music, become the official anthem of Newfoundland, “The Ode to Newfoundland.”
Six musical settings are written to “The Ode to Newfoundland,” the first by German bandmaster E. R. Krippner. Boyle so dislikes the Krippner setting that he buys the rights to it to prevent it from being published.
Newfoundlander Charles Hutton writes two settings in 1906, and Newfoundlander Alfred Allen another in 1907.
What Hutton and Allen were hoping to accomplish remains a mystery, since the Newfoundland government had, on May 20, 1904, adopted as the official setting one written by Boyle’s friend, the famous British composer Hubert C. Barry.
Tradition in Newfoundland has it that Allen’s version was superior to all the others, Barry’s included. But this is typical in a country where the animating myth is that the true king is always in exile or in rags while some pretender holds the throne.