Skye Boat Song: A Song History

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The melody of the "Skye Boat Song" came from a boat trip in the 1870s. Annie MacLeod, who later became Lady Wilson, was being rowed across Loch Coruisk on the Isle of Skye when the oarsmen sang a Gaelic rowing song, "Cuachag nan Craobh." She kept what she could of the tune and later shaped those fragments into an air.[1][2] Sir Harold Boulton (1859–1935) then wrote English words that turned the rowing song into a Jacobite one. His verses recall Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie," escaping by boat to Skye with Flora MacDonald's help after his defeat at Culloden in 1746, the prince disguised as a serving maid.[1][2]

Watercolor of the bare, rugged Cuillin Hills on the Isle of Skye rising beyond a rocky stream

Paul Jacob Naftel, The Cuillin Hills, Isle of Skye, watercolor and gouache over graphite, 1865–71. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The song was first printed in Songs of the North (London, 1884), a collection credited to Boulton and MacLeod together. In later editions MacLeod's name disappeared from the song, and the credit was changed to an old Highland rowing measure arranged by Malcolm Lawson.[1] The song caught on so well that, according to The Fiddler's Companion, people soon claimed to have learned it as children and took its words for old Gaelic verse.[2] Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a different poem that has long been sung to the same melody, "Sing Me a Song of a Lad That Is Gone."[3] It belongs to a group of verses he sent home for publication some months before he died in 1894, and it was printed after his death in Songs of Travel.[4][5] Stevenson's words, sung to this melody, became the theme of the television series Outlander, with "lad" changed to "lass" to suit the show's heroine.[3]

The Fiddler's Companion classes the tune as a Scottish air in 6/8 time and gives it in G major.[2] It is one of the tunes in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[6]

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Sources

  1. Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o Riches: "Skye Boat Song".
  2. The Fiddler's Companion (Andrew Kuntz): "Skye Boat Song (The)".
  3. Rolling Stone Australia: "Annie Lennox Sings a Song of a Lass That's Gone in 'Outlander' Theme for Final Season".
  4. Project Gutenberg: Robert Louis Stevenson, "Songs of Travel and Other Verses".
  5. Representative Poetry Online (University of Toronto Libraries): "Sing me a Song of a Lad that is Gone".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".