Loch Lomond: A Song History

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"Loch Lomond," often called "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond," is a Scottish song listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as number 9598[1]. The Morgan Library & Museum holds an Edinburgh sheet-music edition titled "Bonnie Loch Loman," issued by Paterson & Roy around 1840 or 1841 with piano accompaniment by Finlay Dun and John Thomson under the heading of their series The Vocal Melodies of Scotland; following James Fuld's Book of World-Famous Music, the Morgan treats it as the song's first printing, but notes that it never actually appeared in any of the series' four volumes[2]. Other sources simply date the first publication to Vocal Melodies of Scotland in 1841[1][3].

John Glover watercolor of tall trees beside a stream in a misty Highland glen in early morning light

John Glover, Early morning near Loch Katrine in the Trossachs, Scotland, watercolor over graphite with gum arabic, before 1831. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A Highland scene, not Loch Lomond itself; it has no connection to the song.

The song's origins are wrapped in stories that cannot be proved. A National Library of Scotland commentary on a Dundee broadside of the late nineteenth century reports the rumour that a Jacobite prisoner wrote it while awaiting execution after the 1745–46 rising, in one version for his sweetheart and in another for a fellow prisoner who was spared; the "low road" is read as the path by which, in old Celtic belief, the spirit of someone who dies far from home returns there[4][3]. The Traditional Ballad Index presents both this and the tale that Lady John Scott heard or wrote the song in the 1840s as legends, concluding that its link to the '45 "remains uncertain"[1]. The tune's ancestry is also unsettled: Fuld noticed passages recalling two airs printed in the 1730s and 1740s but still counted it a separate tune, the music historian John Purser proposed it as a variant of "The Bonnie Hoose o' Airlie," and the Irish song "Red Is the Rose" uses the same air[5][6][1].

In the swing era the song found a new audience. Maxine Sullivan recorded it in New York on 6 August 1937 in an arrangement by Claude Thornhill, and it proved a big success[7]. Benny Goodman's orchestra followed on 12 November 1937 with a version sung by Martha Tilton, issued on Victor 25717[8], and the Ballad Index suggests that a Goodman recording of that year probably carried the song, or at least its chorus, into American oral tradition[1].

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Loch Lomond".
  2. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Bonnie Loch Loman" (catalog record 158190).
  3. University of Otago Library, Special Collections: "In Search of Scotland: Loch Lomond".
  4. National Library of Scotland, The Word on the Street: "Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond".
  5. Traditional Tune Archive: "Loch Lomond (1)".
  6. Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park: "Park Stories: Loch Lomond Song".
  7. Jazz Journal: "Maxine Sullivan: The Collection 1937-49".
  8. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Victor matrix BS-017041. Loch Lomond / Benny Goodman Orchestra ; Martha Tilton".