The tune came from the folk song "Kopala studienku" (English: "She was digging a well") suggested to him by his fellow student Jozef Podhradský,[1] a future religious and Pan-Slavic activist and gymnasial teacher,[2] when Matúška and about two dozen other students left their prestigious Lutheran lyceum of Pressburg (preparatory high school and college) in protest over the removal of Ľudovít Štúr from his teaching position by the Lutheran Church under pressure from the authorities.

"Lightning over the Tatras" was written during the weeks when the students were agitated about the repeated denials of their and others' appeals to the school board to reverse Štúr's dismissal.

[3] When one of the students, the 18-year-old budding journalist and writer Viliam Pauliny-Tóth, wrote down the oldest known record of the poem in his school notebook in 1844, he gave it the title of Prešporskí Slováci, budúci Levočania (Pressburg Slovaks, Future Levočians), which reflected the motivation of its origin.

[4] The journey from Pressburg (present-day Bratislava) to Levoča took the students past the High Tatras, Slovakia's and the then Kingdom of Hungary's highest, imposing, and symbolic mountain range.

On January 1, 2025 at midnight, the public broadcaster Slovak Television and Radio first introduced the a partially revised version of its national anthem.

Additionally, the comments by Rózsa, who in response to criticism claimed his version of the anthem was not for liberals, who should "crawl into their holes" as their time in Slovakia was ending were met with widespread condemnation.

[14] Finally, critics argue that the cost of revision, which amounted to approximately €50,000, was too large and that these funds could have been better allocated to sectors such as education or healthcare.

[16] The songs reflected the two nations' concerns in the 19th century[17] when they were confronted with the already fervent national-ethnic activism of the Hungarians and the Germans, their fellow ethnic groups in the Habsburg monarchy.

During the Second World War, "Hej, Slováci" was adopted as the unofficial state anthem of the puppet regime Slovak Republic.

𝄆 To Slovensko naše Posiaľ tvrdo spalo 𝄇 𝄆 Ale blesky hromu Vzbudzujú ho k tomu Aby sa prebralo 𝄇[c]

𝄆 Už Slovensko vstáva Putá si strháva 𝄇 𝄆 Hej, rodina milá Hodina odbila Žije matka Sláva 𝄇[d]

[22] The additional impetus for Janko Matúška to embrace the trend in Lightning over the Tatras was that he actually designed it to replace the lyrics of an existing folk song.