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It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King

[ Roud 5789 ; Ballad Index SMM5IWAF ; Mudcat 26070 , 56056 ; Robert Burns]

Battlefield Band sang It Was All for Our Rightful King in 1977 on their eponymous Topic album Battlefield Band. They noted:

Alan [Reid] sings this lament, which is supposed to have been written by one of the soldiers who fought with King James the Second in Ireland and afterwards volunteered to remain with him in exile in France; the fine air to which it is sung was collected by Robert Burns.

Jean Redpath sang It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King to the tune of Mally Stuart in 1980 on her anthology The Songs of Robert Burns Volumes 2. Serge and Esther Hovey noted:

Mally Stuart, a popular street ballad in Edinburgh in the late eighteenth century, provided Burns with his model for this song. This broadside ballad, identified with Scotland’s crisis of 1745, tells of a trooper parting with his sweetheart. Burns kept the last of the eleven original stanzas intact, but transformed the rest into this masterpiece. The tune of Mally Stuart can be traced to a “North Country” variant of a seventeenth century English ballad, The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington.

Ossian sang It Was All for Our Rightful King on their 1986 album Light on a Distant Shore.

Andy M. Stewart sang It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King on his 1989 album Songs of Robert Burns. His liner notes commmented:

This very fine ballad, with its beautiful air, was supplied by Burns to the Scots Musical Museum—but no name is attached to it. One of its verses, and perhaps the best, “He turned him right and round about”, is found in copies of a stallballad of no value, called, Malty Stewart, and Burns’ authorship has been questioned on this slender pretext.

Mick West sang It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King in 1997 on the Linn anthology The Complete Songs of Robert Burns Volume 3.

Ushna sang It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King in 1997 on their album Brew It Up.

Ellen Mitchell sang It Was Aa for Oor Rightfu King in Rod Stradling’s house in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in March 2000. This recording was included in 2001 on her and Kevin Mitchell’s Musical Tradition anthology Have a Drop Mair.. Kevin Mitchell sang It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King in a concert live at St Andrew’s in the Square, Glasgow, during Celtic Connections 2018 that was released in the same year on the DVD 101 Scottish Songs: The Wee Red Book 3. Ellen Mitchell and Rod Stradling noted on the first album’s booklet:

Ellen: I got this from 101 Scottish Songs, a rare wee book compiled by the late Norman Buchan. The only information given is that it is to a Jacobite air. This book was published in the sixties, and I’m afraid in mine the page with that information is missing.

19^th Century broadside printings from Robertson (Glasgow) 1807 and Macnie (Stirling) 1825, plus appearances in Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum and Ford’s Vagabond Songs and Ballads constitute most of Roud’s six listings of this song. The only instance of its being found in the oral tradition was James Duncan’s collection from Mrs Margaret Gillespie in the early 1900s.

Sheena Wellington sang It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King in 2003 on her Greentrax album Hamely Fare. She noted:

A rewriting of the chapbook ballad Mally Stewart c.1746 which was based on an incident in the 1689/90 Irish campaign which secured the Hanoverian succession. Like virtually all of Burns’ Jacobite or radical works this appeared unsigned, this time in the Scots Musical Museum of 1796.

Craig Morgan Robson sang It Was All for Our Rightful King on their 2009 CD Hummingbird’s Feather. They noted:

The origins of this song are a bit complicated, and as with many folk songs it is not always easy to be totally confident about their provenance. Our Rightful King was first published anonymously, and Sir Walter Scott gave it a Jacobite parentage. James Hogg attributed it to a certain Captain Ogilvie. However, it was later credited to Robert Burns, who frequently collected songs and poetry and used them as a basis for his own writings. We believe that Burns based the song on an earlier ballad, Mallie Stewart.

Ian Bruce sang It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King in 2010 on his Lochshore album Rhythm & Burns.

Hannad Read sang It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King on the 2016 album Songs of Separation.

David Cambridge and Jenna Walker sang A’ for Our Rightfu King on their 2021 CD Wheel and Dive.

Lyrics

Andy M. Stewart sings It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King

It was a’ for our rightfu’ king
We left fair Scotland’s strand;
It was a’ for our rightfu’ king,
We e’er saw Irish land, my dear –
We e’er saw Irish land.

Now a’ is done that men can do,
And a’ is done in vain,
My Love and Native Land fareweel,
For I maun cross the main, my dear –
For I maun cross the main.

He turned him right and round about
Upon the Irish shore,
And gae his bridle reins a shake,
With adieu for evermore, my dear –
And adieu for evermore.

The soger frae the wars returns,
The sailor frae the main,
But I hae parted frae my love
Never to meet again, my dear –
Never to meet again.

When day is gane, and night is come,
And a’ folk bound to sleep,
I think on him that’s far awa
The lee-lang night, and weep, my dear –
The lee-lang night and weep.

Ellen Mitchell sings It Was Aa for Our Rightfu King

It was aa for oor rightfu king
We left fair Scotland’s strand.
It was aa for oor rightfu king
We e’er saw Irish land, my dear –
We e’er saw Irish land.

Noo aa is done that man can do,
But aa is done in vain.
My love, my native land, farewell,
For I mun cross the main, my dear –
For I mun cross the main.

He’s turned himsel right roond aboot
Upon the Irish shore,
And gaed his bridle reins a shake
Wi’ adieu for evermore, my dear –
Wi’ adieu for evermore.

The soldier fae the war returned,
The sailor fae the main,
But I hae parted fae my love,
Never tae meet again, my dear –
Never tae meet again.

When day is done and night is come
And aa folks gone tae sleep,
I think on him that’s far awa
The lea lang nicht and weep, my dear –
The lea lang nicht and weep.