Is "O Come, All Ye Faithful" ("Adeste Fidelis") subversive?

     If I had only know this when I was writing for my high school newspaper! This has been one of my favorite Christmas hymns, maybe because of the two years I spend learning Latin. I wondered if the author and composer, John Francis Wade, was an ancestor of Philadelphia station WFI's disc jockey Long John Wade. Although I am not British by ancestry, I do confess to being an Anglophile, and loved the tales and ballads about Bonnie Prince Charlie Stuart.

     A few months ago I even had two separate dreams about all of this, one of which I included in a poem. My wife shakes her head at all of this. She she is partially of Scots ancestry, I suppose she knows best. In one dream, I was plotting for the Pretender's (James "III's") cause. In the second I was with the Prince during the '45 trying to persuade him to take another route through England.

     Years later I learn this very stirring hymn was written to encourage Jacobites that there was an heir to the throne who would restore the Stuarts. I post a few links about that, and also a solo performance by Friar Alessandro.

     My UK friends and readers can safely sing this song without risk of treason against the Crown. the House of Hanover proved to be better rulers, but part of me will always wonder.......

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Notes_On_Carols/adeste_fideles.htm - about the gymn
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1096974/Christmas-carol-really-rebel-song-celebration-Bonnie-Prince-Charlie-claims-expert.html- from the Daily Mail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z_bE6b-WiA- the Friar sings

Finally, my poem about the two dreams in one night:

Two Dreams in One

Somebody tell me the purpose of dreams!

Divine disclosure of mysterion,

Daytime fears shrouded in nocturnal forms,

Perhaps stagnated Freudian stages

Relentlessly chasing the recumbent

Ego within a seven-hour span.

Last week I guided a group to Berlin

On a high-speed train early in the day.

Like Vonnegut’s hapless Billy Pilgrim,

Suddenly I became unstuck in time,

Finding myself in a wig in London,

A Tory MP and deeply enmeshed

In Jacobite intrigue so that “James III”

Could leave the quotation marks in St. Germain

And not be the king across the water/

Although I prefer the train to treason

I would accept either one if only

Somebody tell me the purpose of dreams!

For the record, I would rather be in Berlin.