Lyr Add: Prince Charlie Stuart

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Prince Charlie Stuart
From: John Moulden
Date: 23 Sep 00 - 07:02 AM

Len Graham sings an augmented version of this - the result of my providing him with the version in Sam Henry's Songs of the people, some additional verses in Sam Henry's (still) unpublished papers and a version in the Kidson Ballad Sheet collection at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. He recorded it on "Do me Justice" Claddagh CC37 - available from Ulstersongs (which I run) www.ulstersongs.com for an out of date catalogue.

Subject: Prince Charlie Stuart
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 22 Sep 00 - 09:13 PM

Another spin-off from the Quest for tunes missing from the DT:

PRINCE CHARLIE STUART

(Brigid Tunney's version)

Come join in lamentation, ye princes and nobles
And kings of the highest degree;
And pity the lot of a poor forlorn maiden
Who mourns for her love night and day.
Although she's but a lady of eighty pounds a year,
Both lords, dukes and earls to her they do draw near.
She disdains them all with silence and she bids them disappear,
For so dear was my Charlie to me.

If you had seen my Charlie at the head of his army,
He was a pleasant sight to behold;
With his fine tartan hose on his bonnie brown leg
And his buckles of the pure, shining gold.
The tartan my love wore was of yellow and green silk,
And his lovely skin in under it far whiter than the milk;
It's no wonder there were hundreds of highlanders killed
In restoring my Charlie to me.

Oh my love was six foot two, without stocking or shoe,
In proportion my true love was built.
As I told you before, upon Culloden moor,
Where the brave highland army was killed.
Prince Charlie Stuart was my true love's name;
He was champion of Scotland and son to King James.
And so far they have banished him over the main,
And so dear was my Charlie to me.

But the grief and the sorrow that blights my tomorrow,
Between and betwixt us does stand;
That my Charlie was brought up in the Catholic religion,
And I in the Church of Scotland.
But if that is all divides us, although my kin may mock,
I will go with my Charlie and worship at a Rock;
And I'll become a member of Saint Peter's flock;
And so dear was my Charlie to me.

The text on the DT was transcribed from Steeleye Span's recording, pretty accurately except for the rather eccentric substitution of "toggin'" for "tartan".  Their source was Brigid Tunney, whose version of the song, taken from her son Paddy's book The Stone Fiddle, I've given here.  Midis of his transcription of her singing, and of Steeleye Span's interpretation of it, go to Alan's Mudcat Midi Pages.

Malcolm