SPEED, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the bairn that’s born to be king,
Over the sea to Skye.
Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air;
Baffled, our foes stand by the shore;
Follow, they will not dare.
Though the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep,
Ocean’s a royal bed;
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head.
Many’s the bairn fought on that day,
Well the claymore could wield;
When the night came, silently lay
Dead in Culloden’s field.
Burned are their homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men;
Yet e’er the sword cool in the sheath,
Charlie will come again.
This moving song tells the tale of one of the famous stories of Scottish history, the escape of Bonnie Prince Charlie (the bairn that’s born to be king) from the Duke of Cumberland’s redcoats after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. The battle was a complete disaster for the Scots, and a large part of the responsibility rested with Charles’s wrong-headed decisions on the battlefield (see The Lion and the Unicorn). Fleeing from the scene, Charles concluded that he had been betrayed and promptly abandoned the Jacobite cause, desperate to save his own skin. Despite a £30,000 reward for his capture, the Young Pretender survived for five months on the run in Scotland, protected and housed by his many supporters, at great personal risk to themselves.
The song tells the dramatic if humiliating story of the final stage of his escape from Scotland, disguised as a ‘lady’s maid’ and posing as Betty Burke, maid to 24-year-old Flora MacDonald, who was later imprisoned in the Tower of London for her part in his escape. Charles returned to Italy the following year where he lived in Rome, drinking heavily and fathering numerous illegitimate children, until his death in 1788. (For the less glamorous side of the Jacobite rebellion, see Elsie Marley.)
Many have assumed that the song is a traditional Scottish one, and the tune is an ancient Gaelic rowing song, but in fact the lyrics were written in 1884, by Sir Harold Boulton (1859-1935), although the melody could be based on a traditional one. The song was part of the Victorian obsession with the more picturesque moments in Scottish history, as spearheaded by Sir Walter Scott. An obvious clue to this is contained in its airbrushing of the less heroic parts of the escape: the fact that Charlie was desperately saving his own skin, leaving his men and everyone who had helped shelter him to be butchered, not to mention the ignominy of sneaking away dressed as a girl.