The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #1867   Message #2322272
Posted By: GUEST,Tom Bliss
22-Apr-08 - 02:42 AM
Thread Name: Origins: The Skye Boat Song
Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
Funnily enough I've just finished a song about BPC and am thinking of putting the Robert Louis Stevenson version on the end. In my childhood in my part of England this was perhaps better known than the Boulton original.
^^^
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul, he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye

Mull was astern, Rum was on port,
Eigg on the starboard bow.
Glory of youth glowed in his soul,
Where is that glory now?

Give me again all that was there,
Give me the sun that shone.
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
Give me the lad that's gone.

Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
Mountains of rain and sun;
All that was good, all that was fair,
All that was me is gone.

RLS was being critical of BPC because he'd become increasingly paranoid and dissolute, then messed up badly at Culloden by overriding his General, Lord Murray (who'd been responsible for all his military successes so far), and sent his men to certain death before renouncing the Jacobite cause and running away dressed as a girl, leaving the army to be butchered by Cumberland, and his supporters to be hanged or transported. (Mind you, that may not be what happened, of course)!

As a nipper I believe the lyric was

"Larry the Lamb was born to be king"!