SKYE BOAT SONG
WORDS: SIR HAROLD BOULTON / MUSIC: SCOTTISH TRAD. ARRANGED FOR TTB BY TOVE KRAGSET
The sound of songs that always seems to have been there
The sound of voyages across the ocean
To new worlds
The sound of something forgotten
The sound of something remembered
The sound of FOLK
As long as people have journeyed through time, songs have travelled with them, taking something unique from one tradition and bringing it to another. Bringing traditions together, connecting people. There has always been a common musical language between the countries connected to the North Sea, where melodies have travelled back and forth for ages along with the journeys of people. Being outward bound, and longing west, I have made my musical journey to Ireland, the Emerald Isle. Their songs, along with the influence from Scotland, seem to represent something familiar to me, as though I’ve always known them. This is where it begins.
I hope these new arrangements will contribute to breathe new air into the old songs and carry them forward, like they have been for centuries, by FOLK.
Tove Kragset
SKYE BOAT SONG
This is a traditional Scottish song recalling the escape of the young pretender Charles Edward Stewart (Bonnie Prince Charles) after his defeat in Culloden in 1746, and commemorating the many Scots who died and were exiled for the Jacobite cause. Prince Charles escaped from Uist to the Isle of Skye in a small boat with the aid of Flora MacDonald. He was disguised as a serving maid. The adherents of Scottish nationalism regard the event as an important national legend.
Words to the tune were written by Sir Harold Boulton to an air collected by Miss Annie MacLeod in the 1870s. It seems that Miss MacLeod was on a trip to the Isle of Skye and was being rowed over Loch Coruisk when the rowers broke out into the Gaelic rowing song “Cuchag nan Craobh” (The Cuckoo in the Grove). Miss MacLeod remembered fragments of the song and fashioned them into an air which she set down in notation with the intention of using it later in a book she was to co-author with Boulton. Sir Harold joined Miss MacLeod in Invernesshire soon after to work on their book. It was he who wrote the additional lyrics in a Jacobite mold, introducing the heroic figures of Bonny Prince Charles and Flora MacDonald.
Skye Boat Song
Words: Sir Harold Boulton Music: Scottish Trad.
Arr: Tove Kragset
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Speed,
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Baff
Speed, bon nie boat, like
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Speed, bon nie boat, like
Speed, bon nie boat, like
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On
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Speed, bon nie boat, like a
Speed, bon nie boat, like a
Speed, bon nie boat, like a