The Skye Boat Song

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The Skye Boat Song has gained the reputation of a traditional Scottish song recalling the escape of the young pretender Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) after his defeat at Culloden in 1746: he escaped from Uist to the Isle of Skye in a small boat with the aid of Flora Macdonald. He was disguised as a serving maid. The 19th century adherents of Scottish romantic nationalism (which included sentimental Jacobitism) enlarged the anecdote to a legend.

The lyrics were written by Sir Harold Boulton, Bart. (1859 - 1935), to an air collected by Miss Annie MacLeod (Lady Wilson) in the 1870s. The song was first published in Songs of the North by Boulton and MacLeod, London, 1884, a book that went into at least fourteen editions. In later editions Miss 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 Laura Alexandrine Smith's Music of the Waters (published 1888).

According to the collector of folk music lore, Andrew Kuntz, Miss MacLeod was on a trip to the isle of Skye and was being rowed over Loch Coruisk (Coire Uisg, the "Cauldron of Waters") when the rowers broke into a Gaelic rowing song "Cuchag nan Craobh" ("The Cuckoo in the Grove"). Miss MacLeod set down what she remembered of the air, with the intention of using it later 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 (see link).

No Scottish traditional or semi-traditional singer had this sentimental favourite in repertory until very recently, nor is it in any older books of Scottish songs, though it is in most miscellanies like The Fireside Book of Folk Songs. It is often sung as a lullaby, in a slow rocking 6/8 time.

[edit] External links

• Andrew Kuntz, The Fiddler's Companion: A Descriptive Index of North American and British Isles Music for the Folk Violin and Other Instruments: authentic origins of the "Skye Boat Song"
• Pop Archives: Covers of "The Skye Boat Song"