Riga's Last Song

2. Note on the text

Greek patriot and poet Rhigas Pheraios (1757?-98), also known as Rhigas Constantine or Rhigas of Velestinos, became a central figure in the movement leading up to the Greek war of independence (beginning in 1821). Inspired by the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Revolution (begun in 1789), he published a revolutionary manifesto in 1797 and established the Hetaireia, a society to promote Greek liberation from the Ottoman Empire. Rhigas was subsequently arrested by the Austrians, turned over to Turkish authorities, and executed in 1798. His celebrated collection of national songs, circulated in manuscript until their publication in 1814, included a Greek version of the French Marseillaise (the hymn of the French revolution and national anthem of France), which Byron freely rendered into English as “Translation of the Famous Greek War Song” (“Sons of the Greeks, arise!”) in Occasional Pieces, 1807-1824. EBB’s dramatic lyric is reminiscent both of Byron’s work and of “Greek Songs” (1823) by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835) in its republican sentiments. As EBB’s mother observed of this and related poems in EBB’s 1826 volume, "What will be most exposed to censure, is the bold freedom of contempt, for those ‘brittle’ things, monarchs: but you do not mind that, & on the Greek cause, you will gain many warm adherents." She also commented with some irony that the young poet took “a bold poetic licence to make poor Riga sing from the scaffold” (BC 1:237, 229). Criticism: Avery and Stott (2003).