Skye Boat Song

I learned this at school, but never found it interesting to sing until I recorded the album "Like a Bird on the Wing" with Peter Fisher - it seemed to just flow around the harp strings.

Words by Sir Harold Boulton, Bart., 1884. Music by Annie MacLeod.

The first half of the tune is said to be an old sea shanty - the second half is traditionally attributed to Miss MacLeod.

Boulton said he used a Gaelic song format, a rowing song called an iorram, and the tune is said to come from the Gaelic song "Cuachan nan Craobh" or "The Cuckoo in the Grove".

Charles Edward Stewart, the Young Pretender, was routed by the Duke of Cumberland on Culloden Moor in 1745. Aided by the Jacobite heroine, Flora MacDonald, Bonnie Prince Charlie escaped to the isle of Skye in the inner Hebrides. He was finally taken by a French vessel to Morlaix on the coast of Brittany.

Scroll down to watch Videos

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

Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,
Thunder clouds rend the air;
Baffled our foes stand on the shore
Follow they will not dare

Though the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep
Ocean's a royal bed
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head

Many's the lad fought on that day
Well the claymore could wield
When the night came, silently lay
Dead on Culloden's field

Burned are our homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men
Yet, e'er the sword cool in the sheath,
Charlie will come again.

Robert Louis Stevenson didn't much care for Sir Harold Boulton's words and, in 1887, wrote the following set. Stevenson puts the song into the mouth of Charles Stewart himself:

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.

Mull was astern, Rum on the port,
Eigg on the starboard bow;
Glory of youth glowed in his soul:
Where is that glory now?

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!

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.