Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 01:13 AM

The song was presumably in vol 3 of Songs of the North; it isn't in the first two, at any rate. Harold Boulton wrote a lot of songs that are often passed off as "traditional" nowadays (see previous discussions on 'Castle of Dromore', for example), and these were often set to older, sometimes traditional, tunes; though he wrote some tunes as well, most notably (from our point of view) the melody to which 'The Lyke Wake Dirge' is nowadays sung.

What Boulton didn't do was write in, or translate from, Gaelic; Andy M Stewart was quite wrong to say that. Unfortunately that error has by now been repeated all over the place. He worked in the same area of songwriting as did Thomas Moore and Albert Percival Graves, both of whom also wrote a lot of stuff that is resolutely claimed as "ancient" and "traditional" by people who are too lazy to do a little basic research.

The excuse made by 'Silly Wizard' is a bit feeble; Boulton only died in 1935, and when they recorded his song it was barely out of copyright.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: ard mhacha
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 07:30 AM

For all that, a beautiful song, I have Liam Clancy singing it with a group of young musicians from an RTE programme, this is my favourite recording of the song.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: ard mhacha
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 07:36 AM

Listen to the Corries singing this song on Youtube another lovely rendering.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST,Tullybeag
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 10:23 AM

"The Northern Lights.." was written by a little old lady from London who had never been in Scotland in her life.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 05:55 PM

What about this: "The melody was collected from a Mrs. Cameron at Inverailort, in the district of Moidart, in 1870".   Is this part true? or did Boulton write the tune as well?

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 09:52 PM

Specific detail of that sort is often accurate; though all references on the web, so far as I can see, were copied from the copy of Andy M Stewart's comment quoted earlier in this thread (apart from the sleevenotes on a cd made by an American player of the Celtic harp, which were probably copied directly from Stewart's songbook); so there is no corroborating information available. As I've said, I haven't seen vol III of Songs of the North (the first two are easy to find, but the third is not) so I can't say what details, if any, were provided.

Most of the tunes in Songs of the North were from traditional or older print sources; only a very few, I think, were modern compositions. The term "collected" is probably an anachronistic modern gloss of Stewart's, though; I doubt if Boulton or MacLeod would have used it.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Freso
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 05:57 AM

Malcolm, I'm so glad you mentioned MacLeod! You see, I'm currently trying to figure out what one McLeod has to with the song.

The Cottars have a version of Loch Tay Boat Song on their release "On Fire!", however, it is apparently attributed to "H. Boulton-R. McLeod", and I believe this thread has so far given me background info detailing Boulton's involvement with the song, but... what is R. McLeod's role in this?

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST,machree01
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 07:34 AM

I have a LP called The Best of Brendan O'Dowda and he's singing Loch Tay Boat Song.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: leeneia
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 10:49 AM

what kind of hair is "lint-white," exactly?

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: leeneia
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 11:07 AM

Me again.

Recently i read a book called "Last of the Donkey Pilgrims." It was the true tale of a Vietnam vet who travelled around Ireland with a donkey and cart in the 1970's. A good book.

One thing that surprised me was (and prob still is) the real enmity that people in Ireland feel toward those with red hair. The woman in the Loch Tay Boat Song has red hair, and that implies a lot about her that Americans would probably never think of. She's probably assumed to be oversexed and devious.

My grandmother (born in 1888) had red hair. I remember her telling me how the kids in Evansville, Indiana taunted her about it, and how ashamed she was. Then one day a woman she had never seen before stopped her in the street and told her how beautiful her hair was and how lucky she was to have something that made her stand out from the ordinary. After that, she was happy about having red hair.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: ard mhacha
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 04:50 PM

In the early 1950s this song was one of the most requested on Radio Eireann and the singer was Brendan O`Dowda.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 06:15 PM

Freso:

The 'R McLeod' referred by 'The Cottars' is presumably a mistake for A C (Annie Campbell) MacLeod, Harold Boulton's co-editor on Songs of the North. It was she who adapted a traditional melody (basically, she wrote the second strain) - whether heard in Skye, in the most common anecdote, or noted from a singer in Moidart as Andy M Stewart is quoted earlier in this old thread as having stated - into the tune to which Boulton set his 'Skye Boat Song'. She married the diplomat Sir James Wilson in 1888, and spent some 20 years with him in India.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST,Henrik W.
Date: 22 Apr 07 - 01:53 PM

One of the best renditions of Loch Tay Boat Song I have ever heard is found on Davy Steele's "Chasing Shadows" album - absolutely magic.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 22 Apr 07 - 03:09 PM

Lint white is the color of Tow. Which is what is left over from stripping flax fibers out to make linen.

Don Meixner

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: mg
Date: 22 Apr 07 - 09:18 PM

I think definitive version was sung by Trapper Graves on the latest Broadside CD..I first heard it at a folklife concert and was wowed by it..partly because I have usually heard her do songs more of a humerous nature...mg

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: leeneia
Date: 23 Apr 07 - 08:34 AM

Thanks, Don, for the explanation of lint-white. There's a family in my neighborhood (the Murphys)whose children often have hair that color.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST,machree01
Date: 07 Jun 09 - 08:44 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2MNY2i0po

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: BobKnight
Date: 07 Jun 09 - 12:27 PM

"The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen" was indeed written by an English lady. Her name was Margaret Mitchell, if I remember correctly.

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 07 Jun 09 - 07:24 PM

Here's a link to more about Sir Harold Boulton:
http://members.cox.net/ggtext/haroldedwinboulton1859_obit.html

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 04:08 PM

Written by Harold Boulton, an Engishman!!

Subject: RE: Need Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 30 Aug 11 - 03:43 AM

From volume III of Songs of the North (Cramer, 1926) and also issued as a separate song, copyrighted MCMXXVI. JBC&Co 13248. 4pp

Song has:

Loch Tay Boat Song. / (A ROWING MEASURE) / (IORRAM LOCH TATHA)
Words by Harold Boulton.
Variant of Old Air / Taken down by Col. Arthur Cameron about 1870 and contributed by Mrs. Cameron Head of Inverailort. / Adapted and arranged by / ROBERT MACLEOD.

In rowing time - with steady swing

1
When I've done the work of day
And I row my boat away
Down the waters of Loch Tay
As the evening light is falling
Then I look upon Ben Lawers
Where the after glories glow
And I dream of two bright eyes
With a merry mouth below
Horo, Horo, Heigh-ho,
She's my beauteous Nighean ruadh (Red-haired maid)
She's my joy and sorrow too
For I doubt she is not true
But I cannot live without her
For my heart's a boat in tow
And I'll give the world to know
If she means to let me go
As I sing heigh ho! Horo!
Horo! Horo! Heigh-ho!

2
Nighean rudh (Red-haired maid), your lovely hair
Has more glamour I declare
Than all the tresses rare
From Killin to Aberfeldy
Be the lint-white gold or brown
Be they blacker than the sloe
They are no more worth to me
Than a melting flake of snow
Horo .....
Oh! Your dance is like the gleam
Of the sunlight on the stream
Like the fairies' songs they seem
The songs you sing at milking
But my heart is full of woe
For last night you bade me go
And my tears begin to flow
As I sing heigh-ho! Horo
Horo ....

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2MNY2i0po

Subject: RE: Origin: Loch Tay Boat Song
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Oct 14 - 07:38 PM

I was thinking it could be named about the Boatman of Loch Tay

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Aug 18 - 02:26 AM

What a darned shame nobody seems to have noted the original words the woman sang in Gaelic!

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 01 Sep 18 - 05:35 PM

> What a darned shame nobody seems to have noted the original words the woman sang in Gaelic!

If any! She may have sung English words or no words. Anyway not Gaelic words corresponding to those written by Boulton. See the 10 Jan 07 - 01:13 AM post by (the late lamented) Malcolm Douglas.

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 01 Sep 18 - 06:35 PM

Yes, it does not in fact say that there were ever Gaelic words, more that the MELODY came from an old Gaelic tune.
Looks like the link I provided in 2009 no longer works, so here is a further one, obit for Harold Boulton, who was apparently involved in many different things!
Harold Boulton
I think I first heard this song on the North Sea Gas CD, Schiehallion: also a good version.

By the way, anyone who got a copy of "Songs of the North Vol 111" is very lucky! (leaving aside any argument about what was done with the songs by our forebears!) Rare as hens' teeth! I have vols 1 and 11 but not 111.

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: BobKnight
Date: 02 Sep 18 - 04:27 AM

Sorry folks - I posted the wrong info about the "Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen." It was in fact written by a woman called, Mary Webb. She wrote it for a work colleague who was homesick for Aberdeen. Her Broadwood piano was brought to Aberdeen after her death and is in the Aberdeen Art gallery and Museums Collection. I believe she visited Aberdeen once.

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Sep 18 - 04:00 PM

Note too that the melody only "came from" an old Gaelic tune. Changes have been made.

My guess is that the second strain was added for the "Boat Song." But that's only a guess.

Does anybody recognize the "old Gaelic tune" said to have been heard in 1870?

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 11:46 AM

Not exactly, but there are phrases within it which often appear in other Gaelic airs, based on arpeggios and runs up and down the scale (or many other tunes, come to think of it!)

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: meself
Date: 03 Sep 18 - 12:13 PM

Reading Harold Boulton's obituary kind of makes me wonder what I've done with my life ... !

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 04 Sep 18 - 06:34 AM

Yes, a man of many talents, or fingers in many pies!

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST,Richard Williamson
Date: 27 Sep 18 - 04:48 AM

The following is just a one-take, simple recording on a mobile phone. But maybe somebody fancies a listen and will enjoy it. It's a truly beautiful song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx1hF6DG8Ck

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST,rhunt
Date: 27 Nov 20 - 11:56 AM

Worth noting there is an American version of this song, recorded as Ohio River Boat Song as sung by the Palace Brothers. Not sure if it was Bonny Prince Billy himself who americanized it, but the garbling of 'nighean ruadh' into 'Carolina' leaves little doubt that it went from Scotland to America and not the other way round!

Subject: RE: Origins: Loch Tay Boat Song info
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jun 24 - 06:58 AM

the loch tay boat song is a trad folk song in my acounts i think the tune was played in gaelic but did not have english lirics untill in 1881 an english poet named harold boltan made new words in english. many people have sung this song but i remember hearing when i was in my teens getting in to radio scotland was by neil maclean who i think was from dunfermerline in fife. he recorded it sometime in the 1920s but i do not know what year. 1 other version of this song you can find earlier was recorded at the edinburgh usher hall by the scotish fiddle orchestra that was sung by mary sandyman. this recording was made just a few years before i moved to edinburgh. my mum had the recording in vinyl and i heard it for the first time. in 1988 i went back to the usher hall wif my father and saw this show again. after the show was over i met mary sandyman and had a good conversation and she shook my hand. you can find that recording very great on all websites but you mite not find neil maclens first recording of it. thankyou from joe.