The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166503   Message #4004277
Posted By: Allan Conn
12-Aug-19 - 12:29 PM
Thread Name: Correct location for historical song?
Subject: RE: Correct location for historical song?
Jack is spot on re "Haughs of Cromdale" in that the lyrics make no sense historically. First of all it has the Jacobites fighting an English army at Cromdale. They weren't - they were rebelling against the Scottish gvt and the army that routed them (in what was a pretty minor affair really) was a Scottish gvt force. Then it brings in Montrose who of course wasn't a Jacobite! He was a royalist civil war general who had been executed decades previously. It also has him fighting 'the English' when he never fought an English force. Certainly not as a royalist general in Scotland during his rebellion. He would have faced English forces when he was a Covenanting general for the Scottish gvt before he changed sides. But the song has him fighting Cromwell. Montrose had been executed by the Scottish gvt several years before the Cromwellian invasion of Scotland. When Montrose had faced any English force it would have been the forces loyal to Charles I - during the Bishops Wars or the Scottish occupation of Northern England. Rather than being his opponent - Cromwell would probably have sympathised with the Scots. It is a grand tune but lyrically it is stuff and nonsense.