Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?

Subject: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: GUEST,len wallace
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 11:06 PM

Hello Friends,

"Ye JAcobites by Name" is indeed a Jacobite song. While the lyrics have often been attributed to Robert Burns, my question is this - The words appear as a criticism of the Jacobites. I have been told that it was written in the style of a anti-Jacobitism in order to hide the original sympathy for the Jacobites.

What say ye? Can anyone tell me its history?

Many thanks.

Len Wallace ([e-mail])

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: GUEST,Willie-O
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 11:11 PM

Well you know what they say, Len. If there's no one else around, a Scotsman will start an argument with himself...

So I don't doubt that it's a possibility! But I wouldn't know...

W-O

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 16 Jan 01 - 12:46 AM

It's obvious when you know the original version of 1746. It's in the Scarce Songs 1 file on my website. www.erols.com/olsonw

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Jan 01 - 01:14 PM

There is a sharp difference in tone. The original version, after the first verse, is not addressed to Jacobites at all, it's just a stream of invective about them. But the Burns version is directed at Jacobites sympathisers throughout, seing them not as enemies to be defeatred but as friends to be won over.

He's putting it together at a time when the Jacobites were history, there was no chance of another rising, because, even aside from any other considerations, there wasn't a viable Jacobite pretender. So the phrase "Jacobites by name" takes on a new meaning - it now means anyone using the name and the sentiments and the rhetoric in a time when the time for that is over. "There are no birds in last year's nests" as Don Quixote puts it, quoting a Spanish proverb.

If you read between the lines you can speculate that he wouldn't have been averse to another crack at the English connection, without the Jacobite trappings, and if there was a chance for victory.

So in no sense pro-Jacobite - but anti-pro Jacobite rather than anti-Jacobite, as the threads title has it.

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: duart
Date: 17 Jan 01 - 07:39 AM

Remember, when Burns wrote the lyrics to the old scots tune, he was employed as a Government customs officer in Dumfries and was trying to gain some credence as a pro- Hanoverian supporter (he had a wife and kids by this time) to eke out his meagre income as a farmer of a pretty poor small farm. I'm pretty sure in his heart he yearned for the Jacobite cause, but 40 years after the failed '45 uprising and having seen at first hand on a tour through the Highlands the utter devastation wreaked by the English forces, Burns was astute enough to know the "way the wind blows" (to quote another great poet and songster). Definitely a song of the head if not the heart.

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 01 - 08:00 AM

The devastation of the Highlands wasn't only or even primarily done by the English - it was done largely by other Scots. (And carried on the Highland chiefs on their own clansmen a generation later with the Clearances.)

That's not to say that the English connection wasn't one of the key factors in all that. And I don't doubt that Burns might have wished it different. But a Jacobite at heart? More likely a Jacobin.

Ye see yon birkie ca'd "a lord"
Wha struts an' stares, an a' that?
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a cuif, for a' that,
For a' thta, and a' thta,
His ribband, star and a' that,
The man o' independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Feb 14 - 07:37 PM

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Feb 14 - 08:39 PM

Burns toned it down a lot. The original (written before he was born) was a savagely anti-Jacobite rant, far too long, crude and obscure to sing. Bruce Olson posted it here:

http://mudcat.org/olson/viewpage.cfm?theurl=SONGTXT1.html#YEJACOB

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Feb 14 - 08:54 PM

Olson says that Burns used only the first stanza. So besides "toning it down," he almost entirely rewrote it.

Compare his creation of the memorable "Killiecrankie" from, evidently, just a couple of lines in two long-winded broadsides:

thread.cfm?threadid=28904#3522372

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: Jim McLean
Date: 09 Feb 14 - 06:25 AM

Burns took a raging anti Jacobite song, crudely written as Jack Campin said, and turned into an anti war song.

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: GUEST,Alan587842
Date: 02 Oct 21 - 02:45 AM

Depends what you sing - and how...

Ye Jacobites, by name, far and near, far and near…
Ye Jacobites, by name, far and near…
Your cause they’ll say is dead. You should bend the knee instead
To some chuthag clothed in red – and blood and fear, blood and fear!
To some chuthag clothed in red – and blood and fear!

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 02 Oct 21 - 06:09 AM

I learnt different words ............
Ye Jacobites, by name,lend an ear, lend an ear
Ye Jacobites, by name, lend an ear
Your cause they’ll say is dead. You should bend the knee instead
To some old hag clothed in red – and blood and fear, blood and fear!
To some old hag clothed in red – and blood and fear!

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: meself
Date: 02 Oct 21 - 05:18 PM

One of our members - don't recall who - some years ago, on another thread, posited the only interpretation that makes sense to me: that the (Burns) song is parodying anti-Jacobite critics. Which isn't to say that it is zealously Jacobite, but that it is mocking the pomposity of those who dismiss the Jacobite cause with facile arguments.

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: GUEST,Alan587842
Date: 03 Oct 21 - 01:20 AM

Hmm..I WROTE this verse...YESTERDAY (2nd Oct, 2021) :-) 'chuthag' = 'cuckoo' (not the right occupant of the throne); the red is blood OR the red coats of soldiery etc. There may well be other folks who have composed pro-Jacobite verses - but not this exact one, I think. Something similar, perhaps? But I'm not aware of them. I made several other more subtle alterations:
Ye Jacobites by name, lend an ear, lend an ear,
Ye Jacobites by name, lend an ear !
Your cause they will defame, your faults they will proclaim,
Your doctrines they maun blame - you will hear, you will hear !
Your doctrines they maun blame, you will hear!
and
Wha’d make heroic strife, famed so wide, famed so wide?
Wha’d make heroic strife, famed so wide?
Wha’d make heroic strife that will whet the Butcher's knife?
Wha’d sell a Prince's life, for gold or hide, gold or hide?
Wha’d sell a Prince's life, for gold or hide?
I tend to think that the Burns' version may well not be quite as anti-Jacobite as it reads, but I want to sing it in a pro-Jacobite context, with other (sentimental) songs. You know THEM.

Subject: RE: Ye Jacobites by Name, anti-pro Jacobite?
From: GUEST,Alan587842
Date: 03 Oct 21 - 01:26 AM

And this was the revision of my own additional verse I finally settled on for performance:

Ye Jacobites, by name, far and near, far and near…

Ye Jacobites, by name, far and near…

Now forget Culloden’s dead, and bend your knee instead

To a’chuthag clothed in red? - No bloody fear, bloody fear!

To a’chuthag clothed in red? No bloody fear!