{"id":16883,"date":"2015-07-11T11:17:42","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T15:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16883"},"modified":"2015-07-11T11:41:07","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T15:41:07","slug":"weekend-music-breakwhats-in-a-song-various-artists-the-skye-boat-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/weekend-music-breakwhats-in-a-song-various-artists-the-skye-boat-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Music Break\/What&#8217;s in a Song: Various Artists, &#8220;The Skye Boat Song&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YrusSXEEv1M?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: opening title sequence from the <\/em>Outlander<em> television series]<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">T<\/span>he Missus and I have been watching, with pleasure, the Starz TV adaptation of Diana Gabaldon&#8217;s <a title=\"Wikipedia, on the 'Outlander' series\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Outlander_series\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Outlander<\/em> novels<\/a>. The pleasure is personal, since we both know Ms. Gabaldon. (As we have since her first drafts of individual paragraphs in what would become the first of the book series, twenty-five years ago.)<\/p>\n<p>And the pleasure is also aesthetic, I guess you could say &#8212; of particular interest, today, the music.<\/p>\n<p>When I first heard the <em>Outlander<\/em> theme song, I was dazzled &#8212; the lyrics, melody, arrangement, and accompanying visuals during the open credits: all seemed of a piece. Mysterious, mystical, wistful&#8230; all those adjectives that I thought to apply as well to (say) the closing title theme in <em>The Return of the King<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the lyrics:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Sing me a song of a lass that is gone,<br \/>\nSay, could that lass be I?<br \/>\nMerry of soul she sailed on a day<br \/>\nOver the sea to Skye.<\/p>\n<p>Billow and breeze, islands and seas,<br \/>\nMountains of rain and sun,<br \/>\nAll that was good, all that was fair,<br \/>\nAll that was me is gone.<\/p>\n<p>Sing me a song of a lass that is gone,<br \/>\nSay, could that lass be I?<br \/>\nMerry of soul she sailed on a day<br \/>\nOver the sea to Skye&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It fits the story, sorta-kinda, and features a disappearing lass, and lots of rich imagery. (<em>Outlander<\/em>&#8216;s protagonist is a 1940s-era British nurse who falls through a sort of temporal discontinuity into the Scotland of the 1740s.) From the start, I &#8212; grammar nerd alert! &#8212; liked about the theme that the lyricist used the first-person singular pronoun for those end-rhymes&#8230; exactly as s\/he should have.<\/p>\n<p>But then during the season finale episode, one thing suddenly grated on me. <em>They hadn&#8217;t used &#8220;I&#8221; consistently perfectly.<\/em> Last line of the middle stanza: see it? a subjective <em>me<\/em>. ARGH. <em>You lazy bastards<\/em>, I thought. <em>And you were doing so well<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>As one does, over the next day or two I looked to the Internets for support from others outraged by such minutiae.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and, um, well&#8230; I was wrong. (Sorta-kinda.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">A<\/span>s it happens, see, the so-called &#8220;theme from<em> Outlander<\/em>&#8221; didn&#8217;t start out as such. It came almost straight from a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson &#8212; included in his <em>Songs of Travel and Other Verses<\/em> (1896) &#8212; which in turn was based on a traditional tune called &#8220;The Skye Boat Song.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And &#8212; yes &#8212; Stevenson&#8217;s poem does the same I\/me thing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Sing me a Song of a Lad that is Gone<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Say, could that lad be <em><strong>I<\/strong><\/em>?<\/span><br \/>\nMerry of soul he sailed on a day<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Over the sea to Skye.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"explannote\" title=\"second largest island in the Scottish Inner Hebrides\">Mull<\/span> was astern, <span class=\"explannote\" title=\"officially, 'R\u00f9m' - small island roughly in the center of the Inner Hebrides\">Rum<\/span> on the port,<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\"><span class=\"explannote\" title=\"island in the Inner Hebrides, south of Skye\">Eigg<\/span> on the starboard bow;<\/span><br \/>\nGlory of youth glowed in his soul;<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Where is that glory now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Say, could that lad be <em><strong>I<\/strong><\/em>?<\/span><br \/>\nMerry of soul he sailed on a day<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Over the sea to Skye.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Give me again all that was there,<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Give me the sun that shone!<\/span><br \/>\nGive me the eyes, give me the soul,<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Give me the lad that&#8217;s gone!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Say, could that lad be <em><strong>I<\/strong><\/em>?<\/span><br \/>\nMerry of soul he sailed on a day<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Over the sea to Skye.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Billow and breeze, islands and seas,<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">Mountains of rain and sun,<\/span><br \/>\nAll that was good, all that was fair,<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 1em;\">All that was <em><strong>me<\/strong> <\/em>is gone.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sigh. Embarrassed again by preconceptions!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/hebridesmap_wikipedia_skyeboatroute.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"width: 50%;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/hebridesmap_wikipedia_skyeboatroute.png?ssl=1\" alt=\"'The Skye Boat Song': map of significant places\" \/><\/a><span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">S<\/span>o what about the Stevenson poem? Obviously it&#8217;s just a romantic song of a young man leaving his home\u00a0perhaps to make his way in the world?<\/p>\n<p>Umm, no. Or rather, umm, no &#8212; not <em>really<\/em>. For there&#8217;s quite a historical context to the song. (And not incidentally, a historical context of importance to the <em>Outlander<\/em> series as well.)<\/p>\n<p>In 1746, Prince Charles Edward Stuart &#8212; a\/k\/a &#8220;Bonnie Prince Charlie&#8221; &#8212; was more or less stuck in the Scottish Outer Hebrides. (These are the tan islands to the west in the map there at the right.) He&#8217;d fled the Scottish mainland (in green) in April, following a disastrous battle against the English at Culloden, and moved about on the islands of North Uist, Benbecula, and South Uist to stay ahead of the English troops in pursuit.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, on June 28, Charles escaped the Outer Hebrides, bound for the island of Skye &#8212; among the Inner Hebrides &#8212; to the east. (Skye, and the other Inner Hebrides mentioned in Stevenson&#8217;s poem, are highlighted with red circles on the map.) Disguised as a maid, he got into a rowboat with several companions, who rowed him from approximately Rossinish, on Benbecula, to the peninsula on Skye, to the northwest, known as Waternish. On the map, Rossinish is the small yellow circle to the west; Waternish, the slightly larger yellow circle. (The straight-line distance between those two points is a bit less than fifty miles.)<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Google Books: 'History of the Rebellion of 1745-6,' by Robert Chambers\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=U5tTAAAAcAAJ&amp;pg=PA347#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">One source<\/a> (originally published in 1827) describes the trip by Charles and his companions this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the forenoon (Saturday, June 28) it being resolved to proceed to sea, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flora_MacDonald\" title=\"wikipedia, on Flora MacDonald\" target=\"_blank\">Miss MacDonald<\/a> desired Charles to dress himself in the disguise, which consisted of &#8216;a flowered linen gown a light coloured quilted petticoat a white apron and a mantle of dun camlet made after the Irish fashion with a hood;&#8217; and the party soon after set out for the beach&#8230; They arrived at the beach very wet and very much fatigued, and made a fire upon a rock, to keep themselves warm till night&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>About eight o clock in the evening the party got safely away from Benbecula, and directed their course to the Isle of Skye.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; padding-right: 30px; font-size: 85%; line-height: 1.25em;\">(Shortly after this passage is another which sketches some of what happened to those who aided Charles, including this: &#8220;O&#8217;Neal, after some wanderings in Skye and elsewhere, was apprehended in Benbecula, and sent prisoner to London. The journal of this person shews a somewhat confused intellect, but he certainly possessed a generous heart.&#8221; I confess, that made me laugh.)<\/p>\n<p>So that&#8217;s it, then: the &#8220;lad&#8221; of the Stevenson version is the Bonnie Prince himself &#8212; whose campaign for the English crown is at the heart of the <em>Outlander<\/em> story line.<\/p>\n<p>The poem seems to take some bizarre liberties with geography, though. The island of Mull behind, Rum on the port, and Eigg off the starboard bow, bound for Skye: this would put Charlie&#8217;s boat somewhere in the channel between Rum and Eigg, a bit north of Muck. <em>Jeez<\/em>, you might say, <em>that Robert Louis Stevenson was one crappy navigator, or researcher, or both!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Umm, well, again: not so fast&#8230; Remember that &#8220;traditional tune,&#8221; &#8220;The Skye Boat Song&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">S<\/span>croll back further from Stevenson&#8217;s time, to the 1870s. The (yes) <em>English<\/em> Sir Harold Edwin Boulton, 2nd Baronet, composed the lyrics to the original &#8220;Skye Boat Song,&#8221; first published in 1884 He laid them down over an &#8220;air&#8221; collected by one Anne Campbelle MacLeod (credited as co-author of Boulton&#8217;s 1884 book) in the 1870s.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the lyric&#8217;s to Boulton&#8217;s song:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The Skye Boat Song<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>[Chorus:]<\/strong> Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,<br \/>\nOnward! the sailors cry;<br \/>\nCarry the lad that&#8217;s born to be King<br \/>\nOver the sea to Skye.<\/p>\n<p>Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,<br \/>\nThunderclouds rend the air;<br \/>\nBaffled, our foes stand by the shore,<br \/>\nFollow they will not dare.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Chorus]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Though the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep,<br \/>\nOcean&#8217;s a royal bed.<br \/>\nRocked in the deep, Flora will keep<br \/>\nWatch by your weary head.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Chorus]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many&#8217;s the lad fought on that day,<br \/>\nWell the Claymore could wield,<br \/>\nWhen the night came, silently lay<br \/>\nDead on Culloden&#8217;s field.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Chorus]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Burned are their homes, exile and death<br \/>\nScatter the loyal men;<br \/>\nYet ere the sword cool in the sheath<br \/>\nCharlie will come again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>See that? <em>Almost no geography at all<\/em>, and the only island mentioned is Skye itself. Stevenson, that rascal: he <em>had<\/em> made all those bits up, after all.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">A<\/span>nd so there&#8217;s still one more layer to dive down into: the &#8220;air&#8221; which Lady MacLeod had discovered. <a title=\"Wikipedia, on the origin of the 'traditional' 'Skye Boat Song'\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Skye_Boat_Song#Origin\" target=\"_blank\">Wikpedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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 Loch Coruisk (Coire Uisg, the &#8220;Cauldron of Waters&#8221;) when the rowers broke into a Gaelic rowing song <em>Cuachag nan Craobh<\/em> (&#8220;The Cuckoo in the Grove&#8221;). 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So much for tradition: &#8220;Cuachag nan Craobh&#8221; has nothing much to do with history. It&#8217;s a love song, a portion of whose Gaelic lyrics (says <a title=\"Google Books: 'The Highland Monthly,' Volume 4 (1893)\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=pWAaAQAAIAAJ&amp;pg=PA750#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">one rather argumentative source<\/a>) go like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Thuit mi le d&#8217;ghath mhill thu mo rath,<br \/>\nStriochd mi le neart dorain<br \/>\nSaighdean do ghaoil sait anns gach taobh,<br \/>\nThug dhiom gach caoin co-lath,<br \/>\nMhill thu mo mhais, ghoid thu mo dhreach,<br \/>\n\u2019S mheudaich thu gal broin domh;<br \/>\n\u2019S mar fuasgail thu tra le t fhuran s le t&#8217;fhailt&#8217;<br \/>\n\u2019S cuideachd am bas dhomhsa.<\/p>\n<p>\u2019S cama lubach t&#8217;fhalt fanna bhui &#8216;nan cleachd<br \/>\n\u2019S fabhrad nan rosg aluinn;<br \/>\nGruaidhean mar chaor broilleach mar aol,<br \/>\nAnail mar ghaoth garaidh&#8212;<br \/>\nGus an cuir iad mi steach an caol taigh \u2019nan leac<br \/>\nBidh mi fo neart craidh dheth,<br \/>\nLe smaointinn do chleas, \u2019s do shugradh ma seach,<br \/>\nFo dhuilleach nam preas blath&#8217;or.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Or, translated to English (per the same source):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yet nought to me but a sting all her bright beauties bring&#8212;<br \/>\nI droop with decay and I languish;<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s a pain at my heart like a pitiless dart,<br \/>\nAnd I waste all away with anguish.<br \/>\nShe has stolen the hue on my young cheek that grew,<br \/>\nAnd much she has caused my sorrow;<br \/>\nUnless now she renew with her kindness that hue,<br \/>\nDeath will soon bid me &#8220;Good morrow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The curl of her hair was so graceful and fair,<br \/>\nIts lid for her eye a sweet warden;<br \/>\nHer cheek it was bright, and her breast limy white,<br \/>\nAnd her breath like the breeze o&#8217;er a garden.<br \/>\nTill they lay down my head in its stone-guarded bed<br \/>\nThe force of these charms I feel daily,<br \/>\nWhile I think of the mirth in the woods that had birth;<br \/>\nWhen she laughed and sported gaily.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fits the tune, doesn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">A<\/span>bout the playlist: The history of this song is so bound up in the popular history of Scotland that it&#8217;s generated dozens, <em>hundreds<\/em> of covers. I haven&#8217;t even tried to collect them all (or even a broad sampling of them all) here.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, I&#8217;ve trimmed the list down to its bare bones:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <em>Outlander<\/em> theme itself (the same tune heard during the title sequence), performed by <a title=\"AllMusic: Raya Yarbrough (biography)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/raya-yarbrough-mn0000987141\/biography\" target=\"_blank\">Raya Yarbrough<\/a>;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Skye Boat Song,&#8221; lyrics and music by Boulton and MacLeod, as performed by Scottish folk duo <a title=\"Wikipedia, on The Corries\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Corries\" target=\"_blank\">The Corries<\/a>; and<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Cuachag nan Craobh,&#8221; sung in the original Gaelic by <a title=\"Fiona McKenzie's Web site\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fionamackenzie.org\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Fiona McKenzie<\/a>. (McKenzie&#8217;s version of the lyrics, with translation, can be viewed on page 10 of <a title=\"Fiona McKenzie: Lyrics\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fionamackenzie.org\/lyrics.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">this PDF<\/a> at her Web site.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: opening title sequence from the Outlander television series] he Missus and I have been watching, with pleasure, the Starz TV adaptation of Diana Gabaldon&#8217;s Outlander novels. The pleasure is personal, since we both know Ms. Gabaldon. (As we have since her first drafts of individual paragraphs in what would become the first of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,16,1027,2252,593,74,196,3477],"tags":[1931,3851,3880,4102,4103],"class_list":{"0":"post-16883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-themissus","8":"category-whats-in-a-song-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-midweek-music-break","10":"category-history-in-the-news","11":"category-music","12":"category-television","13":"category-fantasy-06_writing","14":"tag-folk-music","15":"tag-outlander","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-diana-gabaldon","18":"tag-the-skye-boat-song","19":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4oj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16883"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16998,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883\/revisions\/16998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}