Merck toch hoe sterck

"Merk toch hoe sterck" with variations played by Hans Otto Cor Kee, organist.  The English translation is Notice How Strong.

"Merck toch hoe sterck" (Middle Dutch: transl.  Notice how strong) is a Dutch war song and sea shanty, written around 1626 by Adriaen Valerius (who adapted the "Wilhelmus", the national anthem of the Netherlands). The music is based on an Elizabethan lute song written by Thomas Campion in 1606 (What if a Day or a Month).

Written in the context of the Eighty Years' War.

There are short passages which call to mind, both in Campion's original lute music, but particularly in this Dutch version, the musical refrain from Manfred Mann's Earth Band's The Road to Babylon.

By the waters of Babylon

We lay down and wept and

Wept for these I am

We remember, we remember, we

Remember these I am

Double click to enlarge.

Merck toch hoe sterck

by Adriaen Valerius

Notice how strongly he puts himself to work

Who has ever fought against our freedom

See how he slaves away, digs and marches with force

For our goods and our blood and our cities.

 

Hear the Spanish drums beat!

Hear the Moorish trumpets!

See how he comes over

to occupy Bergen.

Berg op Zoom stay faithful,

Stem the Spanish hordes;

Let our land's trees and its streams

be loyally guarded!

The courageous, bloody, wrathful sword

It shone and it clanged such that the sparks flew from it.

Quaking and shaking, upheaval of earth,

Wonder and thunder, what was below is now above;

Through all the mines and the gunnery,

That one could hear all day,

Many a Spaniard in his cabin

choked on his own blood.

Berg op Zoom stay faithful,

Stem the Spanish hordes;

Let our land's trees and its streams

be loyally guarded!

He of Orange came to oppose the Spanish,

From the field he repelled their violence as a hero;

And as soon as Spinola heard it,

He beat a fast retreat with all his lords.

Cordua soon crawled forth,

He failed to win there

Don Velasco was disturbed

There was nothing he could do

Berg op Zoom stay faithful,

Stem the Spanish hordes;

Let our land's trees and its streams

be loyally guarded!