Wha'll be King but Charlie?

"Wha'll be King but Charlie?"
Charles Edward Stuart, contested King of Scotland and leader of the 1745 Jacobite Rising. Painted in the circle of Louis Tocqué.
Song
LanguageScots
WrittenLate 18th century
Lyricist(s)Caroline Nairne

"Wha'll be King but Charlie?" also known as The News from Moidart, is a song about Bonnie Prince Charlie, sung to the tune of 'Tidy Woman', a traditional Irish jig the date of which is unclear but the tune was well known by 1745.[1] The lyrics were written by Caroline Nairne (1766–1845).[2] Because Nairne published anonymously, the authorship of this and her other poems and lyrics was once unclear, however, late in her life Nairne identified herself and modern scholars accept that these lyrics are hers. Carolina, Baroness Nairne was a Jacobite from a Jacobite family living at a time when the last remnants of political Jacobitism were fading as Scotland entered a period of Romantic nationalism and literary romanticism.[2] Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed in the house where Caroline Nairne was born and reared when fleeing British capture after losing the Battle of Culloden.[2]

Wha'll be King but Charlie? was popular from the late 18th into the 20th century.[3][4][5][6][7][8] The tune was borrowed for use as an African-American spiritual, with an allusion in the hymn to "King Jesus" suggesting that the name of the tune was known to its adaptor.[9] In the 1840s bestseller Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, describes a gathering of sailors with the French singing "La Marseillaise", the Germans singing "O du lieber Augustin", English sailors singing "Rule, Britannia!" and the Scots, "Wha'll be King but Charlie?".[10]

  1. ^ Fraser, Simon (1816). Airs and Melodies peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland and the Isles. Edinburgh. p. 47.
  2. ^ a b c McGuirk, Carol (2006). "Jacobite History to National Song: Robert Burns and Carolina Oliphant (Baroness Nairne)". The Eighteenth Century. 47 (2/3): 253–287. doi:10.1353/ecy.2007.0028. JSTOR 41468002. S2CID 162235375. Gale A164870406 Project MUSE 223780 ProQuest 224658830.
  3. ^ Rogers, Charles, ed. (1872). Life and songs of the Baroness Nairne, with a memoir and poems of Caroline Oliphant the younger. J. Grant.[page needed]
  4. ^ Rogers, Charles (1871). "Wha'll be King but Charlie?". The Scottish Minstrel: The Songs and Songwriters of Scotland Subsequent to Burns. Lee and Shepard. pp. 62–63. OCLC 1083367777.
  5. ^ Wells, Paul F. (1993). "Review of Thomas W. Talley's Negro Folk Rhymes: A New, Expanded Edition, with Music". Ethnomusicology. 37 (1): 127–130. doi:10.2307/852255. JSTOR 852255.
  6. ^ Bayard, Samuel P. (1943). "Review of The Gift to Be Simple". The Journal of American Folklore. 56 (219): 81–84. doi:10.2307/535924. JSTOR 535924.
  7. ^ Gilchrist, Anne G. (1933). "Review of White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands". Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. 1 (2): 107–110. JSTOR 4521031.
  8. ^ Cohen, Norm (2005). "The Forget-Me-Not Songsters and Their Role in the American Folksong Tradition". American Music. 23 (2): 137–219. doi:10.2307/4153032. JSTOR 4153032. Gale A404495136.
  9. ^ Gilchrist, Anne G. (1928). "The Folk Element in Early Revival Hymns and Tunes". Journal of the Folk-Song Society. 8 (32): 61–95. JSTOR 4434189.
  10. ^ Dana, Richard Henry (1840). Two Years Before the Mast.[page needed]