The Hundred Pipers

The song commemorates the surrender of the town of Carlisle to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, on 18 November 1745, when he invaded England, at the head of a mixed army of Highlanders and Lowlanders, after his victory at Prestonpans.

He "entered Carlisle on a white horse, with a hundred pipers playing before him, whose shrill music was not calculated to inspire the citizens with confidence in their grotesque conquerors", according to Burtons History of Scotland.

[1] The episode, recorded in the fourth stanza, of two thousand Highlanders swimming the River Esk, when in flood, on the occasion of the capture of Carlise, is not quite correct.

But Lady Nairne, by combining the two events, produced a very spirited and successful ballad, which takes a high place among later Jacobite songs.

"[7] The tune has not been satisfactorily traced, and though it is indexed in the Lays as "Hundred Pipers", no such air is known to exist previous to the date of Lady Nairne's song.