You’ll probably think as you read the lyrics below that they sound familiar, and you’d be right. This song has had a very long and popular life, starting with its first publication in the 1880’s. The most recent incarnation has been as the theme song for the long-running drama Outlander, based on a series of novels by Diana Gabaldon. I’m not going to deal with anything outside of the actual historical origins of the song, as there’s plenty to say just in that area.
The short version of the story behind the lyrics is that it centers around the Battle of Culloden in 1746, in which the Scots were soundly defeated by a much-larger English force. The battle had come about through an attempted restoration of the Stuart dynasty to Britain’s throne, with the Scottish forces being led by Charles Stuart, or “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (and often referred to in the material below as “BPC.”) It’s an incredibly complicated bit of history that I won’t go into in detail here. If you’d like to get a more thorough overview of the events referred to in the song, let me direct you to a post I wrote several years ago that tells the story behind yet another very famous song associated with this battle: “I’ll Take the High Road and You’ll Take the Low Road.”
There are two almost-simultaneous authors of the lyrics: Sir Harold Boulton, an Englishman who had become fascinated with Scottish history and music while at university, and Robert Lous Stevenson, who didn’t like the strongly partisan slant in some of Boulton’s lines. Boulton got the melody from Anne Campbell MacLeod, his collaborator on a book of Scottish songs. She’d heard it from some rowers when she visited Skye and and “set down” as much of it as she could remember. Boulton liked the tune and decided to use it for his own lyrics. (Just to be clear: that original rowing song had nothing to do with history and instead was a plaintive love song.)
I’ve put together the two versions and included the author’s name and some short commentary for each verse. There are many arrangements out there; see below for a couple of performance videos. My own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, now has in its repertoire an arrangement by one of our members, Andrew Le Vasseur, using a combination of the texts below and making full use of the instrumentation available at our March 2023 Celtix X Concert. (If you’re reading this post before March 3 or 4 and live in the Denver area, you can get tickets for that concert here.)
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day,
Over the sea to Skye.
(Stevenson. These lines are used as a repeated chorus. BPC is speaking; he looks back on his younger self as he set out for what he thought would be a great military victory and so was “merry of soul.” He isn’t actually going to Skye; that comes later, when he’s fleeing. As you’ll see below, though, Stevenson didn’t concern himself too much with accurate geography.)
Give me again all that was there,
Give me the sun that shone!
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
Give me the lad that’s gone!
(Stevenson. BPC longs for the past when he was young and hopeful.)
Mull was astern, Rum on the port,
Eigg on the starboard bow;
Glory of youth glowed in his soul;
Where is that glory now?
(Stevenson. Mull, Rum and Eigg are Scottish islands; the route isn’t geographically correct according to those who’ve mapped it out. BPC wonders what happened to the glory he hoped to achieve; in the wake of defeat it has all vanished.)
Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
Mountains of rain and sun,
All that was good, all that was fair,
All that was me is gone.
(Stevenson. BPC remembers the scene as he landed for the invasion. Again, as with the previous verse, he knows that he’s no longer that good and fair young man.)
Speed bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing
Onward! The sailors cry
Carry the lad that’s born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
(Boulton. These lines are used as a repeated chorus. Now, instead of looking back at history as Stevenson did we’re back in the thick of things as BPC flees from the English forces and escapes to Skye.)
Loud the wind howls, loud the waves roar
Thunderclaps rend the air
Baffled our foes, stand on the shore
Follow, they will not dare.
(Boulton. Unlike the scene when BPC first landed as described by Stevenson, his escape is accompanied by terrible weather. But one good thing is that his foes are unable to follow the boat and so BPC can escape.)
Many’s the lad fought on that day
Well the claymore did wield
When the night came, silently lay
Dead on Culloden field.
(Boulton. Now we’ve moved even farther back to the battle itself and its immediate aftermath. A “claymore” is a type of Scottish sword. But the swords were no match for English muskets, and this mismatch in weapons led to the many Scottish dead left on the battlefield. That’s the conventional theory, anyway; there’s a fair amount of controversy over the exact weapons used by each side. One settled fact, though, is that a number of Scottish troops didn’t even make it to the battle in time to fight and those that did were exhausted and hungry because of having marched all night in an attempt to stage a surprise attack. The English troops were well fed and rested, also greatly outnumbering their opponents.)
Though the waves leap, soft will ye sleep
Ocean’s a royal bed
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head.
(Boulton. BPC fled the battlefield after the defeat at the urging of his supporters; they wanted him to escape and be able to return and fight another day. After months of narrow escapes from his pursuers, the prince was able to get on a rowboat and eventually make his way to a French ship. “Flora” is Flora MacLeod, who helped the prince escape on that boat. She had BPC dress in women’s clothes and pose as her maid.)
Burned are their homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men;
Yet ere the sword cool in the sheath,
Charlie will come again.
(Boulton. There was a horrible brutal aftermath to the battle, with executions, exiles, and property destruction of anyone who had fought for the Jacobite cause. But—and here’s where Boulton’s romanticized view of the past really comes into its own—he pictures the Scots as being ever hopeful that Charlie the Prince would “come again,” and this time be victorious. Notice that the Scots expect him to return soon: “ere [before] the sword [has become] cool in the sheath [after battle].” In reality, everyone pretty much accepted that Culloden was the end of the road for Charles and the cause, and there was never again a serious invasion attempt.
And with that I must close, having as so often in the past overrun my usual word limit. But there are still videos below if your appetite for this song hasn’t yet been sated.
First, the classic version as performed by The Corries, a Scottish folk group that got its start back in the Sixties. They are using Boulton’s lyrics:
And here’s a version from Outlander that basically uses Stevenson’s lyrics. It’s a lovely performance, and including it lets me point out very decidedly that Bear McCreary did not “compose” the song. He arranged it, he did the instrumentation, and he also changed the words slightly (mainly “lad” to “lass,” to refer to Outlander‘s main character Claire). But he didn’t write the original tune or lyrics!
