Skye Boat Song by -Bev-

-Bev- - Skye Boat Song

-Bev-

Apr 25, 2025 07:05pm

Had to try a little experiment here with some harmony...on this lovely Scottish BalladTrivia"The Skye Boat Song" (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roud_Folk_Song_Index" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Roud</a> 3772) is a late 19th-century <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Scotland" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Scottish song</a> adaptation of a Gaelic song composed c.1782 by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ross_(poet)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">William Ross</a>, entitled Cuachag nan Craobh ("Cuckoo of the Tree") In the original song, the composer laments to a cuckoo that his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrequited_love" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">unrequited love</a>, Lady Marion Ross, is rejecting him. The 19th century English lyrics instead evoked the journey of Prince <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Edward_Stuart" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Charles Edward Stuart</a> ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benbecula" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Benbecula</a> to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Skye" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Isle of Skye</a> as he evaded capture by government soldiers after his defeat at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culloden" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Battle of Culloden</a> in 1746.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Harold_Boulton,_2nd_Baronet" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Sir Harold Boulton, 2nd Baronet</a> composed the new lyrics to Ross's song which had been heard by Anne Campbell MacLeod in the 1870s, and the line "Over the Sea to Skye" is now a cornerstone of the tourism industry on the Isle of Skye.Alternative lyrics to the tune were written by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Robert Louis Stevenson</a>, probably in 1885. After hearing the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobitism" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Jacobite</a> airs sung by a visitor, he judged the lyrics to be "unworthy", so made a new set of verses "more in harmony with the plaintive tune".It is often played as a slow lullaby or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltz" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">waltz</a>, and entered into the modern folk canon in the twentieth century with versions by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Paul Robeson</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Jones_(singer)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Tom Jones</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Stewart" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Rod Stewart</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Whittaker" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Roger Whittaker</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tori_Amos" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Tori Amos</a>, and many others.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hebridesmap_Small_Isles.png" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Hebridesmap_Small_Isles.png/250px-Hebridesmap_Small_Isles.png" alt="A map of the Small Isles, showing their location in the Hebrides." height="388" width="250"></a>Location of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Isles" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Small Isles</a> within the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrides" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Hebrides</a>The text of the song gives an account of how Bonnie Prince Charlie, disguised as a serving maid, escaped in a small boat after the defeat of his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_rising_of_1745" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Jacobite rising of 1745</a>, with the aid of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flora_MacDonald" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Flora MacDonald</a>. The song draws on the motifs of Jacobitism although it was composed nearly a century and a half after the episode it describes. Especially Stevenson's version, which gives the boat's course (Mull was astern, Rum on the port, Eigg on the starboard bow) seems to describe Charles's flight from the mainland, but that is unhistorical. The only time Charles was in Skye was when he left Benbecula in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Hebrides" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Outer Hebrides</a> to avoid the increasingly thorough government searches. It is unlikely that a boat from Benbecula would sail south of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B9m" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Rum</a> to travel to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Skye" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Skye</a>.The lyrics were written by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Harold_Boulton,_2nd_Baronet" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Sir Harold Boulton, 2nd Baronet</a>, to Ross's song collected in the 1870s by Anne Campbell MacLeod (1855–1921), who became Lady Wilson by marriage to Sir James Wilson, KSCI (1853–1926), in 1888. The song was first published by Boulton and MacLeod, London, in 1884, in Songs of the North, a book that went into at least twenty editions. In later editions, MacLeod's name was dropped and the ascription "Old Highland rowing measure arranged by Malcolm Lawson" was substituted. It was quickly taken up by other compilers, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Alexandrine_Smith" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Laura Alexandrine Smith</a>'s Music of the Waters (published 1888). Lawson was the elder brother of artist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Gordon_Lawson" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Cecil Gordon Lawson</a>.The song is set in the style of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iorram&action=edit&redlink=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(191, 60, 44);">iorram</a>, a Gaelic rowing song. According to Andrew Kuntz, a collector of folk music lore, MacLeod was on a trip to the isle of Skye and was being rowed over <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Coruisk" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">Loch Coruisk</a> (Coire Uisg, the "Cauldron of Waters") when the rowers broke into a Gaelic rowing song "Cuachag nan Craobh" ("The Cuckoo in the Grove"). MacLeod set down what she remembered of the air, with the intention of using it in a book she was to co-author with Boulton, who later added the section with the Jacobite associations. "As a piece of modern romantic literature with traditional links it succeeded perhaps too well, for soon people began 'remembering' they had learned the song in their childhood, and that the words were 'old Gaelic lines'," Andrew Kuntz has observed.The song was not in any older books of Scottish songs, though it is in most collections like The Fireside Book of Folk Songs. It is often sung as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lullaby" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">lullaby</a>, in a slow rocking <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre_(music)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 204);">6/8 time</a>