The Skye Boat Song

When I posted the pun about running with bagpipes on Monday, Helen mentioned in a comment, "We always sing the song 'Speed Bonnie Boat' as a lullaby in our family."  I looked up the tune and have been listening to it all week.  And humming it all week.  In other words, it became an earworm (a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing).  I also looked up the lyrics and discovered the official name of the song is "The Skye Boat Song," which begins with "Speed bonnie boat."  The verses I've found posted online don't always appear in the same order, but here's one version.

[Chorus:]
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lad that's born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.

Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclouds rend the air;
Baffled, our foes stand by the shore,
Follow they will not dare. [Chorus]

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. [Chorus]

Many's the lad fought on that day,
Well the Claymore could wield,
When the night came, silently lay
Dead on Culloden's field. [Chorus]

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

Listen to it sung here.  The place these lads fought was Culloden.  The date was April 16, 1746.  It seems an unlikely lullaby, when I think of the words, though the tune is soothing.

The Skye Boat Song, the best-known Jacobite song, describes how Bonnie Prince Charlie was disguised as an Irish woman and rowed over the Minch strait to the island of Skye to hide from the British soldiers.