“The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”, or simply “Loch Lomond” for short, is a well-known traditional Scottish song (Roud No. 9598). It was first published in 1841 in Vocal Melodies of Scotland. Loch Lomond is a large Scottish loch located between the counties of Dunbartonshire and Stirlingshire. The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond is often the final piece of music played during an evening of revelry (a disco or dinner, etc.) in Scotland, a phenomenon not seen in other parts of the United Kingdom. About 1876, the Scottish poet and folklorist Andrew Lang wrote a poem based on the song titled “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”. The title sometimes has the date “1746” appended—the year of the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion and the hanging of some of his captured supporters. Lang’s poem begins:

There’s an ending o’ the dance, and fair Morag’s safe in France, And the Clans they hae paid the lawing, Morag—great one in Gaelic—referred to Bonnie Prince Charlie, who fled to France after his forces were defeated. Lawing means reckoning in Scottish dialect. The poem continues:

And the wuddy has her ain, and we twa are left alane, Free o’ Carlisle gaol in the dawing. Wuddy means gallows, according to Lang’s own notes on the poem; dawing is dawn. The poem continues with the song’s well-known chorus, then explains why the narrator and his true love will never meet again:

For my love’s heart brake in twa, when she kenned the Cause’s fa’, And she sleeps where there’s never nane shall waken The poem’s narrator vows to take violent revenge on the English:

While there’s heather on the hill shall my vengeance ne’er be still, While a bush hides the glint o’ a gun, lad; Wi’ the men o’ Sergeant Môr shall I work to pay the score, Till I wither on the wuddy in the sun, lad! “Sergeant Môr” is John Du Cameron, a supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie who continued fighting as an outlaw until he was hanged in 1753. There are many theories about the meaning of the song. One interpretation is that it is attributed to a Jacobite Highlander who was captured after the 1745 rising. The British played games with the Jacobites, and said that one of them could live and one would die. This is sung by the one who was sentenced to die, the low road referred to being the passage to the underworld. Some believe that this version is written to a lover who lived near the loch.

A related interpretation holds that a professional soldier and a volunteer were captured by the English in one of the small wars between the countries in the couple hundred years prior to 1746. Volunteers could accept parole, a release contingent on the volunteer’s refusal to rejoin the fighting, but regulars could not and so could face execution. The volunteer would take the high road that linked London and Edinburgh while the soul of the executed regular would return along the “low road” and would get back to Scotland first.

Another interpretation is that the song is sung by the lover of a captured rebel set to be executed in London following a show trial. The heads of the executed rebels were then set upon pikes and exhibited in all of the towns between London and Glasgow in a procession along the “high road” (the most important road), while the relatives of the rebels walked back along the “low road” (the ordinary road travelled by peasants and commoners).

It captures some of the romantic spirit of the lost cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Another interpretation of the ‘Low Road’ is that it refers to the traditional underground route taken by the ‘fairies’ or ‘little people’ who were reputed to transport the soul of a dead Scot who died in a foreign land – in this case, England – back to his homeland to rest in peace.

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By  Chanticleer

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