The Skye Boat Song

[1] In the original song, the composer laments to a cuckoo that his unrequited love, Lady Marion Ross, is rejecting him.

After hearing the Jacobite airs sung by a visitor, he judged the lyrics to be "unworthy", so made a new set of verses "more in harmony with the plaintive tune".

[2] It is often played as a slow lullaby or waltz, and entered into the modern folk canon in the twentieth century with versions by Paul Robeson, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart, Roger Whittaker, Tori Amos, and many others.

The text of the song gives an account of how Bonnie Prince Charlie, disguised as a serving maid, escaped in a small boat after the defeat of his Jacobite rising of 1745, with the aid of Flora MacDonald.

[3] Especially Stevenson's version, which gives the boat's course (Mull was astern, Rum on the port, Eigg on the starboard bow) seems to describe Charles's flight from the mainland, but that is unhistorical.

[3] In later editions, MacLeod's name was dropped and the ascription "Old Highland rowing measure arranged by Malcolm Lawson" was substituted.

MacLeod set down what she remembered of the air, with the intention of using it in a book she was to co-author with Boulton, who later added the section with the Jacobite associations.

"As a piece of modern romantic literature with traditional links it succeeded perhaps too well, for soon people began 'remembering' they had learned the song in their childhood, and that the words were 'old Gaelic lines'," Andrew Kuntz has observed.

It was extremely popular in its day and, from its first recording by Tom Bryce on 29 April 1899,[6] it became a standard among Scottish folk and dance musicians.

The film was based on the attack by British midget submarines (human torpedoes) on the German battleship Tirpitz in a Norwegian fjord during the war.

The amateur choir for which they were intended found the songs too difficult, and the first performance took place in July 1958, given by the London Bach Group, conducted by John Minchinton, at Royaumont in France.

The same album, released in the U.S. as It's Not Unusual, which included only 12 of the original 16 tracks, gave no attribution for the arrangement but did characterise the song as "Trad.—2:57.

[10][11] Ncuti Gatwa, as the Fifteenth Doctor, sings the songs to calm himself while standing on a land mine, in episode 3 of series 14, "Boom" (broadcast 18 May 2024).

Among later renditions that became well known were Peter Nelson and The Castaways from New Zealand, who released a version in 1966, as did Western Australian artist Glen Ingram.

A tough garage rock version of the song by a New Guinean band, The Stalemates, was included on the Viking Records compilation The New Guinea Scene in 1969.

"The Skye Boat Song" can be heard at the beginning of "Who Stole the Bagpipes", the second episode in season one of the early 1980s British cartoon Dangermouse.

James Galway and The Chieftains recorded an instrumental version (which was used as background music for a Johnnie Walker commercial) in February 1990 at Studios 301, Sydney, Australia, released on the album Over the Sea to Skye – The Celtic Connection.

The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin recorded an arrangement by their artistic director Desmond Earley for their 2015 album Invisible Stars: Choral Works of Ireland and Scotland[15] The song was played by pipers as the coffin of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II travelled up the Long Walk to Windsor Castle on 19 September 2022.

Burned are their homes, exile and death Scatter the loyal men; Yet ere the sword cool in the sheath Charlie will come again.