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"The Skye Boat Song" is a late 19th-century Scottish song adaptation of a Gaelic song composed c.1782 by William Ross, entitled Cuachag nan Craobh ("Cuckoo of the Tree"). In the original song, the composer laments to a cuckoo that his unrequited love, Lady Marion Ross, is rejecting him. The 19th century English lyrics instead evoked the journey of Prince Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") from Benbecula to the Isle of Skye as he evaded capture by government soldiers after his defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Sir Harold Boulton, 2nd Baronet composed the new lyrics to Ross's song which had been heard by Anne Campbell MacLeod in the 1870s, and the line "Over the Sea to Skye" is now a cornerstone of the tourism industry on the Isle of Skye. Alternative lyrics to the tune were written by Robert Louis Stevenson, probably in 1885. After hearing the Jacobite airs sung by a visitor, he judged the lyrics to be "unworthy", so made a new set of verses "more in harmony with the plaintive tune". It is often played as a slow lullaby or waltz, and entered into the modern folk canon in the twentieth century with versions by Paul Robeson, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart, Roger Whittaker, Tori Amos, and many others. Content The text of the song gives an account of how Bonnie Prince Charlie, disguised as a serving maid, escaped in a small boat after the defeat of his Jacobite rising of 1745, with the aid of Flora MacDonald. The song draws on the motifs of Jacobitism although it was composed nearly a century and a half after the episode it describes. Especially Stevenson's version, which gives the boat's course (Mull was astern, Rum on the port, Eigg on the starboard bow) seems to describe Charles's flight from the mainland, but that is unhistorical. The only time Charles was in Skye was when he left Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides to avoid the increasingly thorough government searches. It is unlikely that a boat from Benbecula would sail south of Rum to travel to Skye. Origin The lyrics were written by Sir Harold Boulton, 2nd Baronet, to Ross's song collected in the 1870s by Anne Campbell MacLeod (1855–1921), who became Lady Wilson by marriage to Sir James Wilson, KSCI (1853–1926), in 1888. The song was first published by Boulton and MacLeod, London, in 1884, in Songs of the North, a book that went into at least twenty editions. In later editions, 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). Lawson was the elder brother of artist Cecil Gordon Lawson. The song is set in the style of a iorram, a Gaelic rowing song. 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 "Cauldron of Waters") when the rowers broke into a Gaelic rowing song "Cuachag nan Craobh" ("The Cuckoo in the Grove"). MacLeod set down what she remembered of the air, with the intention of using it 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. The song was not in any older books of Scottish songs, though it is in most collections like The Fireside Book of Folk Songs. It is often sung as a lullaby, in a slow rocking 6/8 time. Recording history and covers It was extremely popular in its day and, from its first recording by Tom Bryce on 29 April 1899, it became a standard among Scottish folk and dance musicians. From the 1960s onwards, it became even more widely known and has remained popular in mainstream music genres. The song was also used in the British World War II film, Above Us The Waves (1955), with John Mills, James Robertson Justice and John Gregson. The film was based on the attack by British midget submarines (human torpedoes) on the German battleship Tirpitz in a Norwegian fjord during the war. Michael Tippett originally included the song, titled as "Over the Sea to Skye", in his arrangements of Four Songs from the British Isles for unaccompanied four-part chorus in 1957, commissioned by North West German Radio, Bremen, for a festival of European folk song. The amateur choir for which they were intended found the songs too difficult, and the first performance took place in July 1958, given by the London Bach Group, conducted by John Minchinton, at Royaumont in France. Tippett's Selected Letters states that he proposed to replace "Over the Sea to Skye" because it was "too strictly held by a publisher here". Alfred Deller recorded a version for his album Western Wind in 1958, together with Desmond Dupré on guitar and John Sothcott on recorder. It was performed to great acclaim and recorded by artist and social activist Paul Robeson in 1959 and 1960. Welshman Tom Jones recorded a version, arranged by Lee Lawson and Harold Boulton, on his 1965 debut album Along Came Jones. The same album, released in the U.S. as It's Not Unusual, which included only 12 of the original 16 tracks, gave no attribution for the arrangement but did characterise the song as "Trad.—2:57." Esther & Abi Ofarim recorded the song under the title "Bonnie Boat" for their album Das Neue Esther & Abi Ofarim Album (1966). Doctor Who Patrick Troughton, as the Second Doctor on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who, played the song repeatedly on his recorder in episode 6, scene 10 of "The Web of Fear" (broadcast 9 March 1968). Hits Down Under Among later renditions that became well known were Peter Nelson and The Castaways from New Zealand, who released a version in 1966, as did Western Australian artist Glen Ingram. Both versions were in the Australian hit parade in 1966. A tough garage rock version of the song by a New Guinean band, The Stalemates, was included on the Viking Records compilation The New Guinea Scene in 1969. 1970s Calum Kennedy included a version on Songs of Scotland and Ireland (Beltona 1971), and Rod Stewart recorded two versions of the song with The Atlantic Crossing Drum & Pipe Band during the sessions for Atlantic Crossing between 1974 and 1975. They were given an official release on the deluxe re-release of the album in 2009. After 1980 "The Skye Boat Song" can be heard at the beginning of "Who Stole the Bagpipes", the second episode in season one of the early 1980s British cartoon Dangermouse. It can also be heard in "Tomorrow Night" by the New Zealand musical theatre duo The Front Lawn on their 1989 album Songs from the Front Lawn. Roger Whittaker's duet version with Des O'Connor, released in 1986, made the UK top 10; it combined O'Connor's vocals with Whittaker's whistling version.... Discover the Skye Jones popular books. 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