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Skye Boat Song / Twa Bonnie Maidens

[ Roud 3772 ; Ballad Index Brew79 ; trad.]

Katherine Campbell, Ewan McVicar: Traditional Scottish Songs & Music

The Corries sang The Skye Boat Song on their 1970 album Scottish Love Songs and on the 1971 Philips compilation of The Spinners, Martin Carthy, and The Corries, Focus on Folk.

The Clancy Brothers with Louis Killen sang Skye Boat Song on their 1972 album Save the Land.

Archie Fisher sang Twa Bonnie Maidens on his 1976 Folk-Legacy album The Man With a Rhyme. He noted:

Part of a longer and rather flowery song about the flight to Skye of Bonnie Prince Charlie after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, when, disguised as an old woman, the Young Pretender and Flora MacDonald deceived the redcoat sentries. The air is also known as Planxty George Brabazon. The corrie in the first verse is “a hollow space or excavation in a hillside”.

Maggie Goodall sang Skye Boat Song in 1984 on Martyn Wyndham-Read et al’s Greenwich Village album The Old Songs.

German duo Sperris & Wicca sang The Skye Boat Song on their eponymous 1999 album Sperris & Wicca.

Lyrics

Archie Fisher sings Twa Bonnie Maidens

There were twa bonnie maidens and three bonnie maidens
Cam’ ower the Minch and cam’ ower the main,
Wi’ the wind for their way and the corrie for their hame,
They are dearly welcome to Skye again.

Chorus:
Come along, come along, wi’ yer boatie and yer song,
To my hey, bonnie maidens, my twa bonnie maids,
For the nicht it is dark and the redcoat is gone
And you’re dearly welcome to Skye again.

There is Flora, my honey, sae neat and sae bonnie,
And ain that is tall and handsome withal.
Put one for my queen and the other for my king
And they’re dearly welcome to Skye again.

There’s a wind in the tree and a ship on the sea,
To my hey, bonnie maidens, my twa bonnie maids,
By the sea mullet’s nest I will watch ower the main
And you’re dearly welcome to Skye again.