Origin: Loch Lomond variants?

Subject: Loch Lamond varients?
From: adsears
Date: 23 Jun 99 - 05:20 AM

I resently heard someone sing a song to the tune of Loch Lamond about life after the battle of Culloden. I would love to know if this was is a well known varient or if it was rewitten for the performance. Eternal gratitude to any one who can give me, or can point me toward, these lyrics.

Subject: RE: Loch Lamond varients?
From: Ian
Date: 23 Jun 99 - 07:54 AM

adsears

Loch Lomond was written after Culloden. A good brief history of it is here:

Loch Lomond

Subject: Lyr Add: LOCH LOMOND + RED IS THE ROSE
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 24 Jun 99 - 03:23 AM

Here's a variant I found somewhere or other:

LOCH LOMOND

I weep the same, oh bonnie bonnie maid,
True love from battle returning,
At the height of his fame, you come prescient
And turn into gladness your mourning.

CHORUS: O' ye'll tak the high road and I'll tak the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye.
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

Oh well may I weep, ye dream in my sleep,
Still bride and bridegroom together.
But his lips and his breath were chilly as death
And his heart blood was red in the heather.

So earnest in battle was earnest in love,
Yield nae a foot to the foeman.
With his laugh so pristine he will never return
To his love on the banks of Loch Lomond.

-sung by Richard Thompson on French Frith Kaiser Thompson's "Invisible Means" (1990).

* * *
using the same melody; there's an Irish song called "RED IS THE ROSE":

CHORUS: Red is the rose that in my garden grows
And fair is the lily o' the valley
Clear is the water that flows from the Boyne
But my love is fairer than any

Twas down by Killarney's green wood that we strayed
And the moon and the stars they were shining
The moon shone its rays on her locks of golden hair
And she swore she'd be my love forever

It's not for the parting that my sister pains
It's not for the grief of my mother
It's all for the loss of my bonny Irish lass
That my heart is breaking forever

Subject: RE: Loch Lamond varients?
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 24 Jun 99 - 03:28 AM

And more . . .

High road/low road - Celtic belief had it that the spirit of the dead always returned to its birthplace, traveling beneath the earth. Hence the "low road" and would arrive much sooner than the living who had to travel the winding mortal "high road", i.e: above the ground.

Subject: RE: Loch Lamond varients?
From: Bruce from Bathurst
Date: 24 Jun 99 - 03:42 AM

I've discovered if I try to flatpick 'Redwing' after too much malt whisky it mysteriously transforms itself into 'Loch Lomond'. Certainly makes for an interesting medley. Bruce

Subject: RE: Origin: Loch Lomond variants?
From: GUEST,Anon
Date: 18 Nov 18 - 12:57 AM

Nineteen years late, I believe, so nobody might see this. I wasn't even alive when these messages existed, but here I am anyhow.

'Red is the Rose' could be another variant of Loch Lomond. It's an Irish song made famous by the Clancy brothers.

Aside from that I'm here because I want to know if there are any other songs with a different title, but sang to the same tune as Loch Lomond?There's one at the back of my mind but I can't quite remember what it is.

Subject: RE: Origin: Loch Lomond variants?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Nov 18 - 08:39 AM

There will be many other threads on this. "Loch Lomond" was first published (undated) by the Edinburgh broadside printer Sanderson in the early 19th century, and was almost certainly written by Lady John Scott aka Alicia Spottiswoode. She never owned up to it and never hinted at any hidden meaning, but it has no link to Culloden except in the heads of romanticizing fantasists. The tune is a variant of an 18th century Lowland Scottish love song, "Kind Robin lo'es me".

"Red Is the Rise" is a better song, anyway.

Subject: RE: Origin: Loch Lomond variants?
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Nov 18 - 08:54 AM

> romanticizing fantasists

The bane of my life.

Well, one of the banes anyway.

Subject: RE: Origin: Loch Lomond variants?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 18 Nov 18 - 03:02 PM

I think Jack is right and there is nothing in the lyric to suggest it is a Jacobite song. Alicia was a Borderer and another Borders poet from Selkirk called Andrew Lang wrote a poem at a slightly later date which is a version of Loch Lomond and has the narrator as a prisoner at Carlise. I think the idea that Alicia's song is Jacobite comes from Lang's later version and not the original.