My friends, let me warn you that the history behind this innocuous-sounding song is right in my wheelhouse, or up my alley, or whatever expression you want to use. I’ll try to rein myself in, but it’s going to be hard. So hang in there with me to find out more than you thought possible about a song you’ve probably heard many times but never questioned. Let me just quote the chorus before we get started:
O you take the high road, and I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye,
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
The person who takes the low road is going to get to Scotland first, but he won’t ever see his true love again. So is he better off than the person who’s taking the high road? Well, it depends on the specific way that the words are interpreted.The most common explanation of the song is that it refers to the Battle of Culloden in 1746, which was fought in Scotland between the forces of the British crown and those who saw Charles Stuart as the legitimate heir to the throne. Let’s see now—where to begin? In order to get even a glancing idea of how this all started I have to go back to Henry VIII, that bloated, monstrous figure who had broken with the Roman Catholic church in the 1530’s over his desire to divorce his first wife and marry Anne Boleyn. For the 200+ years since then England had swayed back and forth between the Roman Catholic church and the Church of England, or Anglican church, a conflict that was for many in government simply a matter of politics and power, not true religious belief. Since Elizabeth I, Henry’s third child, had died unmarried and childless in 1603, the throne had passed to her cousin James Stuart, then the king of Scotland, and he had become James I of England as well as James VI of Scotland. His son, Charles I, ended up getting himself beheaded during the English Civil War, and Charles’s sons, Charles and James, went into exile. Eventually Charles Jr. was invited back to rule as Charles II, an event in 1660 that is called the Restoration.
Well! Everyone heaved a sigh of relief. The new Charles was quite content to rule as an Anglican and devoted himself to his own enjoyment, earning the nickname “The Merry Monarch.” The number of his mistresses was legendary, but alas! Regardless of how many illegitimate children he may have fathered, he had no legitimate heirs, so on his death the throne passed to his brother, who became James II. Here’s where things get even more complicated and where we start on the immediate chain of events that lead to our bi-level road.
While Charles II had been pretty comme ci, comme ça about the whole religion question, James very much leaned Catholic. Everyone hoped, though, that he’d die without any male heirs—he was in his fifties when he became king, and his first marriage had produced only (horrors!) two daughters—Mary and Anne, who had been raised Anglican. His second marriage, to the Roman Catholic Marie of Modena, produced ten (yes, ten) pregnancies and five living children, but all of them died young. So, again, sighs of relief all around even over miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant deaths. Then, in 1688, three years after James became king and five years after Marie’s most recent pregnancy before this, a son was born who seemed capable of surviving, who would be first in line for succession since he was a male, and who would definitely be raised Catholic. There were deep suspicions that this baby had been smuggled into the royal birthing chamber by way of a warming pan; thus that famous phrase “warming-pan baby.” (You haven’t heard it before?) That did it. The British just couldn’t stand the thought of yet more civil and religious strife and a return to Roman Catholic dominance. So they deposed James and invited the Protestant William of Orange, husband of Mary from James’ previous marriage (remember her?), to come take the throne. This event, called the Glorious Revolution by those who welcomed it, forced James with his wife and son into exile. When James died in 1701 this son, Charles, claimed the British throne—for all the good that did him. He mounted some unsuccessful invasions but they never got anywhere. Fun fact: he was called “The Old Pretender” by those who denied his claim to the throne; a “pretender to the throne” is exactly what you’d think from the wording. (“The Old Illegitimate Claimant” is a bit of a mouthful.) And why is he the “old” pretender? Ah, because he had a son who also claimed the throne; he was called “The Young Pretender.” But this son’s most famous nickname was “Bonnie Prince Charlie.”
So now, after many stops along the way, we’ve finally gotten to the point of our song. By 1746 William and Mary had both died and had no living heirs, so Mary’s sister Anne had succeeded to the throne. Her seventeen pregnancies had produced miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant deaths, with only one child surviving past babyhood—and he died at age 11. Anne’s husband was Danish and also Lutheran—so he wasn’t in line for the throne. (You had to be a member of the Church of England to sit on the British throne. George of Denmark wasn’t too bright of a bulb anyway and seems to have had no royal ambitions.) So when Anne died in 1714 the Catholic Stuarts were of course ignored and the throne passed to her nearest Protestant-willing-to-be-Anglican relative, her second cousin George of Hanover in Germany, who became George I. But there were many supporters of James Stuart and his descendants who believed them to be the rightful heirs.
Finally, after a number of failed attempts to re-take the throne, the Jacobite forces (“Jacob”=”James”) under Bonnie Prince Charlie were soundly and decisively defeated in the Battle of Culloden in 1746, a battle that lasted only an hour but had far-reaching effects, especially on the losers. BPC fled back to France and lived out the rest of his life in exile, mainly known for his mistress-collecting. (Thus following in the footsteps of his great uncle Charles II. The apple, as they say, doesn’t fall very far from the tree.) But the Scottish ringleaders who had fought on his behalf were either killed on the battlefield or captured and taken back to London for a series of show trials, at the end of which at least some of them were found guilty and executed in, as one source puts it, “the vilest way possible,” which would have been by the method of hanging, drawing, and quartering—a gruesome, protracted means of death used for maximum pain and humiliation that included partial suffocation by hanging, then cutting open the belly and removing the intestines, then (sometimes) cutting the body into quarters or, more commonly, beheading it. (We have records showing that the main “rebel lords” were simply beheaded, which was at least a quicker death.) TMI, perhaps? Anyway, the heads of the executed men would then have been put on pikes and paraded back along the highway to Edinburgh, capital of Scotland, serving as an object lesson to anyone else who would have been contemplating the continuation of the Jacobite cause. The families of the condemned men, including wives and girlfriends, would have come to London to view the trials and executions, traveling by the “low road,” that is, the paths and roads that were available to them as they walked down to London. They would have returned the same way, getting back home sooner than the heads and corpses of their loved ones, since they wouldn’t have been stopping along the way to be displayed. And that wife or girlfriend who’s speaking in the song would never have seen her beloved again where they used to meet on the shores of Loch Lomond, the largest lake in Scotland. (“The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond” is an alternative title for the song.)
The above is the most commonly-accepted interpretation for the lyrics, and it’s probably the best. There is evidence that many prisoners were either exchanged, banished, or simply set free, but there were almost certainly some whose heads were indeed carried back on the high road. This interpretation would call for the song to be performed by a woman, since clearly a heterosexual romantic couple is implied, but the song is often performed by a male singer. There is at least one other possible meaning that would fit a male: the idea, well-attested in the historical record, that prisoners to be executed were chosen by lot. A single man, perhaps, someone with no dependents, could have taken the place of a married man with children. Then we’d have to say that the “low road” is the grave, or perhaps the traditional underground route used by fairies or little people who return any Scot dying in a foreign land back home to rest in peace. The speaker is now the doomed man speaking to his friend whose place he is taking, and he knows he will never see his own true love again. Since his spirit can be instantly transported, he’ll get back to Scotland before his friend.
Let’s see–I never answered the question in the title of this post. Who’s better off? It depends–both on which interpretation you accept and also on whether you think it’s better to be alive-but-bereaved (as the left-behind sweetheart) or dead-but-at-peace (as the self-sacrificing friend), or the spared friend (who accepts the exchange of lots). The one person you don’t want to be is the beheaded Scotsman being paraded on the high road. I guess the low road wins out.
Here’s a wonderful, beautiful, evocative video by a performer whom I’d never heard of, but who is clearly someone to be reckoned with since she’s garnered over four and a half million views. I especially like the way the older version of the sweetheart is incorporated into the video It’s great!
And if you’d like to hear a brief (only five minutes) talk about the song (which, I think, does somewhat overstate how many Scots were actually executed), here’s the link: “The Dark Tale of Bonnie ‘Loch Lomond‘”
And here’s at least one version of the lyrics, with the caveat that I try to include with all folk songs that there are many variations out there:
By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond,
Where me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
O you take the high road, and I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye,
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
‘Twas there that we parted, in yon shady glen,
On the steep, steep side of Ben Lomond,
Where in soft purple hue, the hieland hills we view,
And the moon coming out in the gloaming.
O you take the high road, and I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye,
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
The wee birdies sing and the wildflowers spring,
And in sunshine the waters are sleeping.
But the broken heart it kens, nae second spring again,
Though the woeful may cease from their grieving.
O you take the high road, and I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye,
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
© Debi Simons
