Songs of the Carolina Charter Colonists, 1663-1763

Chapter II

Jacobite And Whig Songs

[26] Emigration from Scotland and, to some extent, from England, during the period 1663-1763, was connected with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the accession of William and Mary (Orange County, North Carolina, getting its name from the Prince of Orange), and the various Jacobite risings between 1715 and the Battle of Culloden in 1745. In this movement of population the Scots loom large. A recent book by Professor Duane Meyer, The Highland Scots in North Carolina, 1732-1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), de-emphasizes the popular notion that the defeat of the Jacobites (adherents of the House of Stuart—“Jacobite” coming from the Latin Jacobus for James) was the principal cause of the emigration. Still, it demonstrates several facts of importance to us in our study of the songs of the Colonists of the period. 1) North Carolina received more Scots than did any other North American province. 2) The causes of migration were more economic than political; there was a “population explosion” in the Highlands after about 1730. 3) Though there had been several settlements of Lowland Scots in North Carolina before 1700, the first settlement of the Highlanders on the Cape Fear was probably in 1732, and by 1776 “the colony of Highlanders may ... well have numbered 12,000” (p. 85).

“Thomas Pennant,” writing in A Tour in Scotland (II, 355-366—a reference the present author was unable to check because the U. N. C. Library has only vol. I), says Professor Meyer, “found that as early as 1750 poverty caused such a ‘depression of spirit’ among the inhabitants of the island of Skye that groups of them were sailing for America” (Meyer, op. cit., p. 38 and notes, p. 171). “The migration... to North Carolina began in the 1730’s and slowly gained momentum. On the eve of the American Revolution, such large numbers [27] were leaving the Highlands that Samuel Johnson, visiting in North Britain, could speak of ‘an epidemick’ of wandering which spreads its contagion from valley to valley” (Meyer, p. 3, with citation of Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands, Oxford University Press, 1924, p. 87).

After Culloden, many of the Scots were in fear for their lives. They had been technically guilty of treason, though at times the Hanoverians showed magnanimity, as in the famous scene in Redgauntlet in which the young Pretender’s enemies surround him, and he takes his last farewell, and he and they are told:

“You, sir—all—any of the gentlemen present,” said the General—“all whom the vessel can contain, are at liberty to embark, uninterrupted by me; but I advise none to go off who have not powerful reasons unconnected with the present meeting, for this will be remembered against no one.”

Nevertheless, many of them “had powerful reasons unconnected with the present meeting.” One of the Whig songs of the time asked,

But the main motive for emigrating was economic:

Thus it happened that

[28] Highlanders who had lost their clan chiefs and the protection of the tight clan organization went to America.

“The emigration movement,” writes Professor Meyer, “reached its peak in the 1770’s.” Wherever they went, Boswell and Johnson in 1773 found people contemplating emigration. The Reverend Alexander Pope in 1774 wrote that half of the people of Caithness would have left for America immediately if they could have obtained shipping. The desire to emigrate was reflected in the popular lyrics of the day and in ballads which proclaimed the glories of the New World. Farewell laments by emigrants were set to melodies and distributed from settlement to settlement. On the island of Skye, in 1774, the inhabitants performed a dance called “America.” Each of the couples successively whirls round in a circle, till all are in motion; and the dance seems intended to show how emigration catches, till a whole neighborhood is set afloat. All ages are captured in this emigration frenzy. A company from Strathspey in Inverness included a woman of 83 years, on foot, with her son before her playing Tullochgorum on his bagpipes; some of them had children of a month old, which the fathers carried on their backs in a skull or wooden basket. (With citations, pp. 61, 206)

According to another student of the migration quoted by Professor Meyer, “one Highland dance popular at the time included the words ‘Going to seek a fortune in North Carolina’” (p. 175).

[29] Settled in the Cape Fear region and spreading out to the Piedmont and the mountains of North Carolina, these people took part in the Regulator Movement of 1763-1772 and in the American Revolution. In the Revolutionary War most of them were Tories, and under the leadership of Flora MacDonald, her husband, and others, settled near Cross Creek (now Fayetteville). Forming a small Tory army, they took part in the disastrous Battle of Moore’s Creek, and were again, in some instances, refugees. About Flora MacDonald and her previous relations with Bonnie Prince Charlie clusters a group of romantic songs which will be subject to later comment and exemplification.

In his chapter “Life on the Cape Fear,” Professor Meyer gives many homely and intimate details of everyday life through which the Jacobite songs wove dark, and the Scots love songs, silver threads.

In the history and the folk literature of North Carolina, these old Jacobite songs are not merely museum pieces, the possession of a cultivated few. One of the best children’s encyclopedias, The Book of Knowledge (New York: The Grolier Society, Inc., c. 1938), devotes half a dozen pages (vol. V, pp. 5638-5644) to “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” his education and career, his army and his defeat, and his rescue by Flora MacDonald. The editors remark, “Wherever the English tongue is spoken, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ is a familiar name among educated people.” It is also a familiar name among North Carolina children, who play, or once played, a game with a song going back to Bonnie Prince Charlie, as well as one which recalls the battle of Killiecrankie, involving the fortunes of his family, in 1689.

[30] CHARLIE IS MY DARLING: HJRS 92-93. So popular in the South that it has gone over into a play-party or dance song.

[31] Flora MacDonald and Bonnie Prince Charlie

James Boswell’s account of his and Dr. Samuel Johnson’s meeting with Flora MacDonald is one of spots of time in the greatest of all biographies.

Sept. 12, 1773—There was a comfortable parlour with a good fire, and a dram went round. By and by supper was served, at which there appeared the lady of the house, the celebrated Miss Flora MacDonald. She is a little woman, of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well bred. To see Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great champion of the English Tories, salute Miss Flora MacDonald in the Isle of Skye was a striking sight.

Miss Flora MacDonald (for so I shall call her) told me, she heard upon the main land, as she was returning home about a fortnight before, that Mr. Boswell was coming to Skye, and one Mr. Johnson, a young English buck, with him. He was highly entertained with this fancy. He was rather quiescent to-night, and went early to bed. I was in a cordial humour, and promoted a cheerful glass. The punch was excellent. Honest Mr. M’Queen observed that I was in high glee, “my governor being gone to bed.”

Monday, Sept. 13—The room where we lay was a celebrated one. Dr. Johnson’s bed was the very bed in which the grandson of the unfortunate King James the Second lay, on one of the nights after the failure of his rash attempt in 1745-6, while he was eluding the pursuit of the emissaries of government, which had offered thirty thousand pounds as a reward for apprehending him. To see Dr. Samuel Johnson lying in that bed, in the Isle of Skye, in the house of Miss Flora MacDonald, struck me with such a group of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe, as they passed through my mind. He smiled, and said, “I have had no ambitious thoughts in it.”

[32] He had caught a cold a day or two ago, and the rain yesterday having made it worse, he was become very deaf. At breakfast he was the lucky man; and observed, that without doubt it had been contrived between Mrs. MacDonald and him. She seemed to acquiesce; adding, “You know young bucks are always favourities of the ladies.” He spoke of Prince Charles being there, and asked Mrs. McDonald, “Who was with him? We were told, Madam, in England, there was one Miss Flora MacDonald with him.” She said, “They were right”; and perceiving Dr. Johnson’s curiosity, though he had delicacy enough not to question her, very obligingly entertained him with a recital of the particulars which she herself knew of that escape, which does so much honour to the humanity, fidelity, and generosity of the Highlanders. Dr. Johnson listened to her with placid attention, and said, “All this should be written down.“—Ernest H. Shepard, ed., Everybody’s Boswell (London, 1949), pp. 514-515.

PRINCE CHARLES AND FLORA MACDONALD’S WELCOME TO SKYE: MJSB 241

FLORA’S LAMENT: MJSB, pp. 266-267. [Note (p. 357): All the song-writers who have associated the Prince and Flora MacDonald in their compositions err greatly as to facts. This song is no exception to the rule.]

[36] IT WAS A’ FOR OUR RIGHTFU’ KING: HJSR 26. Hogg says that the song was composed by a Captain Ogilvie, and that it refers to the officers who were loyal to King James II after he abdicated and went to France.

[37] KILLIECRANKIE: HJSB 40-41 (one version pub. in JSMM, perhaps touched up by Robert Burns). It is not in BCNCF, but it has been in oral tradition in Illinois and Mississippi, to which latter it was brought from North Carolina by emigrants from the Highland Scots settlements in the first half of the 19th c. (HFM 170-171). The battle of Killiecrankie was the last stand made by the clans for James II after his abdication. Here the gallant Dundee, though he won the battle, fell.

[38] LASSIE, LIE NEAR ME: HJRS 211-212. The song, Hogg wrote, “is from Cromek; being an old song, a little varied from the original of Laddie, lie near me,” and he added a long note on the history behind it, connecting it with Prince Charlie. It is enough to note that the singer, having lost his battle and been nearly slain, seeks comfort where all good soldiers do after battle.

LOGIE O’ BUCHANS JSMM (1781-1803, but the reference of the song is Jacobite, and the reputed author died in 1756); see HFM 171-172 from oral tradition in Mississippi, which drew a considerable percentage of its population from North Carolina.

O’ER THE SEAS AND FAR AWA: HJSB 51. “He,” below, refers to James II; “Whigs,” to his enemies and to adherents of William of Orange; “Noll,” to Oliver Cromwell; “Will,” to King William (Prince of Orange).

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