Some comments as a result of the messages left so far in response to my enquiry.
The poem looks like it was a dodger - on a piece of 'poor' quality brown paper (one side only with the printed poem) and approx. 18cm x 30 cm. Our somewhat brittle item has three fold marks and the edges are torn, no doubt through age and use. So there is no date that can be found from this as it obviously was not of newspaper origin.
Why do I think it would be ascribed to 2BW rather than to WW1? Both the "Wacht am Rhein" and "Hoch der Kaiser" were known at the time. In the poem the first two verses talk a number of times about "he" and 'him" and it seems reasonable to draw the conclusion that this considerable portion - a half - of the poem therefore concerns the named "Paul" (surely, Kruger); so that suggests to me that that is the era in which the poem is penned, rather than later in relation to German settlers.
Not that it has been mentioned in response, I have checked out whether the explosive lyddite was known at the time of the Boer War and it was indeed known.
Regarding the "German flag", my interpretation has been that it suited the writer to use the term for his intended reader - that is, as a propaganda 'put down' of the other side - to use the words "Deutsch" and "German" interchangeably, as in the two lines of the third verse "Ve sing of Deutscher flag mit all our braise; Vy, den we find dot kid dat tore down dot German flag". It seems also to me that the linking of Dutch (unsaid) and Deutsch (said) is a contrivance to persuade, it being a link to the Boer "perpetrators' as envisaged by the writer, with the word 'Boer' never being mentioned in the poem.
I do appreciate the comments that have been made to date and I look forward to having further input into this intriguing "puzzle' within our collection.
|