Origins: The Skye Boat Song

Subject: The Skye Boat Song
From: vmalin
Date: 10 Jun 97 - 08:42 PM

Hi I'm trying to find the guitar chords to this song.

Subject: Chords Add: SKYE BOAT SONG
From:
Date: 10 Jun 97 - 09:24 PM

Try these:

Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing

Onward the sailors cry

Carry the lad that's born to be king

Over the sea to Skye

C - G - / C F C G / C - G - / C F C -

Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar

Thunderclouds rend the air

Baffled our foes stand on the shore

Follow they will not dare

Am - Dm - / Am F Am - / Am - Dm - / Am F Am G

If you haven't followed this type of tab before, the chords and dashes each represent the down beats in each line. A dash means that the chord does not change at that downbeat. Experiment and have fun.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From:
Date: 12 Jun 97 - 03:25 AM

Here's a slightly different arrangement.

SKYE BOAT SONG

CHORUS

[G] Speed, bonnie boat, like a [D7] bird on the wing

[G] Onward! The [C] sailors [G] cry ---

[G] Carry the lad who was [D7] born to be King

[G] Over the [C] sea to [G] Skye.---

[Em] Loud the winds howl, [Am] loud the waves roar

[Em] Thunder claps [E] rend the [Em] air ---

[G] Baffled, our foes [Am] stand by the shore

[Em] Follow -- they [Am] will not [Em] dare. ---

Though the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep

Ocean's a royal bed

Rock'd in the deep, Flora will keep ---

Watch by your weary head. (CHORUS)

Burned are our homes, exile and death ---

Scatter the loyal men

Yet ere the sword cool in the sheath

Charlie will come again. (CHORUS)

Note. This song was sung by the followers of Prince Charles who (routed by the Duke of Cumberland) escaped to the Island of Skye - in the Hebrides. - Gene

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Peter Timmerman
Date: 12 Jun 97 - 10:19 AM

If you don't mind transposing it over to the key of D on the guitar, there is a dead simple strumming trick for this song I was taught years ago by a Scotsman, where you begin a fast strum on a standard D, open the second string (officially going to D6) and then shifting to A7sus 4 (that is an open A7 with the finger that is usually on the second fret of the second string moved up one fret to behind the 3rd fret) and then back to A7. It gives a haunting little opening, like a boat scudding through the water -- at least it does to me! Yours, Peter

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Bert Hansell
Date: 12 Jun 97 - 10:55 AM

Thanks Peter, I'll try that when I get home.
Bert

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From:
Date: 12 Jun 97 - 10:57 AM

a search at http://www.dejanews.com for [ skye boat ] brought up this interesting SITE - Gene

http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~craig/

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From:
Date: 12 Jun 97 - 05:52 PM

Can anyone recommend a good recording of this song?

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Dale Rose
Date: 12 Jun 97 - 11:15 PM

My favorite recording is probably unavailable, but happy hunting! Esther and Abi Ofarim recorded it, mid sixties, but a quick check of my albums did not turn it up. I can tell you two albums that it is NOT on, though~~their Your Heart Is Free Just Like The Wind/Cinderella Rockefella and Ofarim Concert albums. Both were on Phillips, and I am pretty sure that the mislaid album is, too.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Dale Rose
Date: 13 Jun 97 - 07:09 AM

Music Boulevard lists 15 versions here~~

http://mb1.musicblvd.com/cgi-bin/tw?SID=134926866199403&MT=41&STORE=all&limit=100&search_term=skye+boat&search_type=song&x=36&y=16

Six of the seven versions that have realaudio listed have the song available for listening, but none of them play long enough to tell if there are vocals or not.

Incidently, if that URL is not a case for copy and paste, I don't know what is.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Peter Timmerman
Date: 13 Jun 97 - 10:31 AM

If you don't mind a sort of average version, John McDermott does it on his recent album, Old Friends.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From:
Date: 13 Jun 97 - 03:59 PM

My favorite (and only, so far) version of Sky Boat Song is to be found on Celtic Odyssey.. it's entirely instrumental, done on strings and flute

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From:
Date: 13 Jun 97 - 04:10 PM

My favorite (and only, so far) version of Sky Boat Song is to be found on Celtic Odyssey.. it's entirely instrumental, done on strings and flute

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From:
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 05:38 PM

does anyone know the original singer to this song

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 05:53 PM

Sir Harold Boulton wrote the words around 1884, so I expect it was first publically performed by a professional singer, in a recital of some sort. At least part of the tune is older than that, though; see the various links above for more information.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Dale
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 11:41 PM

It's kind of painful to know that EIGHT years have gone by and I still don't know where that album is.

Esther and Abi Ofarim's version is on CD now. There is a sound sample at Amazon.de They called it Bonnie Boat, by the way. I had forgotten that, but it wouldn't have helped me locate the album.

It didn't sound quite as good as I remembered it. Maybe my tastes have changed in the 10 or more years since I last heard it by them.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 02:01 AM

The Corries, great version, on the album ' Kishmuls Galley '

eric

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Hugo
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 05:41 AM

There is a version by Alastair McDonald, on an album called "Scotland in Song". He gives the name of the song as "over the sea".

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Tally Ho Man
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 07:54 AM

Just come back from Skye. There's a bridge now where the boat used to be but at least the toll is no longer in force. I preferred it when Skye was an Island, but it's still as beautiful as ever. Tried an arrangement of SBS with self on 'cello and daughter on accordian, sounded OK for amatuers!(So the current Mrs Tally Ho Man said!

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Jim McLean
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 09:34 AM

I produced the Alastair McDonald LP in 1972(?). We titled the song 'Over the Sea to Skye' for copyright reasons.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 10:24 PM

Paul Robeson did a great version.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 02:42 AM

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"!

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,TB
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 02:57 AM

Actually, now I think about it, we sang a hybrid. My Grandparents moved to Broadford for a while, so it got a good few airings on the long drive North, with a Special Rendition at the rail of the ferry!

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Muttley
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 05:39 AM

Hi Tom

Was just wondering - would you use the same tune as 'The Skye Boat Song' for your version?
If so - which parts would the chorus differentiation be attached to?

Loved the precis of BPC's downfall and the consequences involving Cumberland and transportation. Personally I reckon it's a pretty bloody accurate version of what happened. If you read most of the accounts - that's pretty much how it all panned out in the end. The Irishman Sullivan (O'Sullivan in some accounts) was apparently responsible for the disastrous setup at Culloden - he got away as well and ended up receiving a Papal dispensation and a gift of title and lands from Rome in a personal meeting with the Pope: Meanwhile all those he screwed with his pathetic military "tactics" got massacred, hunted down and transported. Mind yoy - his was probably the final stuff-up in a long line of stuff-ups that ended the campaign. If the popular accounts are to be believed; all went well until the Jacobites were within striking distance of London and Charlie of the throne itself when the chiefs began to get 'jittery' and Charlie "lost his bottle" and ran away!

As you say - we weren't there, so it's left to the victors and the disillusioned to tell the story.

Either way; Culloden is a VERY sad place to visit. I spent 2 and a half hours walking the moors on a visit there in '05 and most of that time I was saddened to the point of tears at the tragedy that occurred there.

The earthen dykes that Murray suggested be pulled down and which Sullivan ordered to be left alone are still there giving mute evidence of the latter's incompetence in that the English did exactly what Murray SAID they would do - hid behind them and as the Clans charged, rose up and caught them in a killing, deadly enfillade.

Muttley

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 05:53 AM

As kids we sang the chorus of Boulton's version with the verses of Stevenson's, using RLS's chorus as the first verse (assuming that 'sing me a song' WAS originally the RLS chorus). They are both to the same tune and would have Over the Sea to Skye as the refrain (I thought it meant reaching the horizon till we went to Scotland for the first time)!

I often wonder what the original lyric was. Possibly a waulkin song in gaelic?

(My song is actually about Long Preston Peggy and the fall of Manchester)

Tom

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Susan of DT
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 06:12 AM

The Stevenson version is in the DT as Over the Seas to Skye (variant)

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 06:21 AM

Not a waulking song; see thread Skye Boat Song for some detail.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 06:36 AM

Thanks Malcolm yes I had read that thread, though I've also heard the suggestion from elsewhere (sorry can't remember where, possibly someone at a gig in Scotland) that it might have started out as waulkin' (sorry I forgot the apostrophe) song originally. (We do a waulkin' tune in our set so people often come to tell us stuff afterwards).

And thanks, Susan. My sketchy understanding is that RLS objected to the jingoistic tone of Boulton's work and penned the new words wherein BPC is in France reflecting on his failures - but that could be wrong too.

Heady stuff either way

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Muttley
Date: 23 Apr 08 - 02:31 AM

Brilliant - thanks Tom

Mutt

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: masato sakurai
Date: 25 Apr 08 - 05:46 AM

The version in John Greig's Scots Minstrelsie, vol. 6 (1893) was written by Margaret Bean.

p. 352
p. 353
p. 354

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 25 Apr 08 - 07:41 AM

Now that IS interesting, Masato - thanks! I've never seen that version before...

So can anyone confirm these dates:

1746 - Charles Stewart rows/is rowed to Skye (from Uist, not the mainland?)

Pre 1790 - First known lyrics 'Cuachag nan Craobh' by William Ross - nothing to do with BPC?

(Date of tune unknown, probably pre-existing, and possibly originally a waulkin', or used for, as many probably were)?

1879 - Tune collected in Skye and noted down by Annie McLeod (Later Lady Wilson).

1884 - First new lyrics (fairly Jackobite) by Boulton, with second part of tune added by McLeod (who's credited with the whole tune)

1893 - Second new lyrics (VERY Jacobite) by Margaret Bean

1908 Third new lyrics (non-Jacobite) by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Is that right?

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 26 Apr 08 - 07:56 AM

Not quite.

Stevenson's lyric was published posthumously; it pre-dates Miss Bean's long-forgotten effusion, which was written at the request of Greig's publishers, who seem, puzzlingly, to have been unaware of the tune's provenance, though they gave it Boulton's title. In her Songs of Scotland (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1996) Wilma Paterson quotes from Mrs Stevenson's account:

'The writing of "Over the sea to Skye" grew out of a visit [in 1887, to the Stevensons at their house in Samoa] from one of the last of the old school of Scots Gentlewomen, Miss Ferrier, a granddaughter of Professor Wilson (Christopher North). Her singing was a great delight to my husband,who would beg for song after song, especially the Jacobite airs, which had to be repeated several times. The words to one of these seemed unworthy, so he made a new set of verses more in harmony with the plaintive tune.'

Stevenson's lyric, set to the tune, was found among his papers after his death in 1894. He too seems to have been unaware that it was a modern song. It was subsequently published, with the music, with the permission of the copyright holders.

Is there actually any evidence that the 'Cuachag nan Craobh' tune was ever used for waulking (not waulkin', please)? It was heard by Miss MacLeod as a rowing song ('iorram') and there doesn't seem on the face of it to be any reason to think that it was 'originally' used for waulking.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 26 Apr 08 - 09:18 AM

You're probably right Malcolm. I've no idea if the person who suggested it to me (and I can't even remember who it was or where) knew what they were talking about. The feel and rhythm of the collected 'A' part (which is used three times in the Boat song - the B part was added by McLeod, yes?) has the same feel as, for one, 'Waulkin' o' The Fauld' (sorry that's where i got the spelling from - again someone told me it was the correct way - but they were probably just winding me up too)! I wonder if there was a different B part too, originally, because the A part is plainly just that.

Also I've tried many times actually to row to the Skye song, but it's too quick, and you get out of sequence on the down-beats - they keep falling on a different part of the stroke even if you're really racing, which has always puzzled me. It is however just right for squeeze-folding urine out of a bolt of cloth though, so when someone told me it really was I was included to keep that option open.

Am I right in thinking that McLeod heard the tune from a boatman who was actually rowing? If so is it possible that he just liked the tune and didn't mind the misfit? That would be very different to a song that was made during and for the activity.

But I bow to your greater knowledge.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jan 10 - 02:44 PM

I am looking for the sheet music, hopefully for piano and voice, of THE SKYE BOAT SONG. Can you help me? Linda

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 10 Jan 10 - 03:11 PM

Nah, learn No gods and precious few heroes instead. It tells what a waster Charles Edward Stewart really was,

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Jan 10 - 11:47 PM

STUART, please, Diane. Might have been a waster & all; but at least spell the poor bugger's name right!

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Jan 10 - 01:22 AM

OK.
Teàrlach Eideard Louis John Casimir Silvester Severino Maria Stiùbhairt, most commonly transcribed into English as Charles Edward Stewart was the son of a Polish princess and part of a pan-European Catholic hierarchy who fancifully imagined he had a right to the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland. He was not "poor" but "ran like a rabbit through the glen leaving better folk than him to be butchered" at Culloden.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: BobKnight
Date: 11 Jan 10 - 05:28 AM

"Stuart," came into being through Mary Queen of Scots, who married into the French royal family. I believe, I may be wrong, that there is no "W," in the French language, so they changed the spelling to "Stuart."

"Stewart," came to be the name of the Scots royal family through the marriage of Marjory Bruce, the daughter of Robert The Bruce, to Walter - High Steward of Scotland. Thus "Steward," through time became Stewart.

""Stuart," is the wrong spelling.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Jan 10 - 05:41 AM

Not the wrong spelling for the English Royal House that s. the Tudors on accession of Jas VI & I via the unfortunate and infinitely wronged Mary Stuart (who thus had the posthumous last laugh after all) — definitely the House of Stuart - & as that was the throne Bonnie Chairlie aspired to, he was certainly Charles-Edward Stuart in his own eyes whilst Young Pretending!

So poo!!!

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Jan 10 - 05:49 AM

Wiki gives - ==Clan Stewart or Clan Stuart (Gaelic: Stiùbhard) is a Highland Scottish clan==

— both spellings acceptable, neither 'wrong': but for the Anglo-Scotch Royal House of the Jas's & Chas's only the Stuart spelling acceptable, I repeat...

So I say again - double-pooh·2·U in ♠♠♠

luvya justa·same - Michael

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Stuart is the wrong spelling
Date: 11 Jan 10 - 06:09 AM

Checking the phone book here (ie southern Scotland)there are far more Stewarts than Stuarts but there are some with the spelling Stuart. Stuart certainly isn't wrong as the Scottish royal family had already chose to change to that spelling prior to taking over the English throne and it has been in use for not so far off 500 years now! Charles Edward's name was surely Stuart!

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Eytan
Date: 12 Jan 10 - 12:25 PM

Actually only Esther Ofarim recorded it(without Abi) in 1966 on this album http://www.esther-ofarim.de/o7big.htm and as mentioned before the track in now on a CD.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jan 10 - 01:25 PM

Brief score here:
Skye Boat

Several sites offer sheet music for download, for a small fee.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: GUEST,Q as guest
Date: 12 Jan 10 - 01:26 PM

My cookie has rotted or eaten by rat clone. Q

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: kendall
Date: 12 Jan 10 - 01:32 PM

People couldn't spell in those days. Many still can't.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: Jim McLean
Date: 13 Jan 10 - 08:04 AM

The derivation of Stewart/Stuart is "pig watcher". 'Nuff said.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Jan 10 - 11:36 AM

We all know about the Campbells and the MacDonalds. Is there by any chance, in light of last post, any similar tradition between the McLeans and the Stewarts? If not - what motivated it, Jim.

Not NEARLY 'nuff said, I should say.

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: MMario
Date: 13 Jan 10 - 11:43 AM

Just telling the truth....Stewart is derived from the Middle English Stiward, which is in deriivation means sty watcher

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: bubblyrat
Date: 13 Jan 10 - 12:13 PM

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales,Duke of Cornwall,Duke of Sutherland,Earl of Carrick,Earl of Chester,Baron Renfrew,and Lord of The Isles (plus a few others,I suspect), is also the Great Steward of Scotland ; does this mean that he is obliged,even if only symbolically,to observe or watch over,swine ?? It wouldn't surprise me !!
As to the song.....try the (at least two) versions by favourites of mine,The McCalmans ; lovely !!

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Jan 10 - 12:26 PM

Mario - Jim —

Jim's "'nuff said" implied in its tone [the recognised & conventional tone & implication of this interjection] that there was something dodgy, or some implied disgrace, or something relating to some subject best avoided, regarding the Stewarts' having such a derivation for their name.

You are being evasive & disingenuous if you pretend otherwise.

I ask again - what motivated this? An honest answer, please? What have you against the Stewarts?

Subject: RE: The Skye Boat Song
From: kendall
Date: 13 Jan 10 - 01:01 PM

I have a dear friend named Stewart in Canada who is the last rightful Stewart king of Scotland, and he spells it STEWART.