#the skye boat song...

[youngpettyqueen]

so Boom was absolutely foreshadowing the Master coming back right

[corallapis]

I love that song. It's about Bonnie Prince Charlie. I know, it's sweet. Let's go. It's sweet, and it's sad. And it's about soldiers fighting. But it's sad, like a lullaby, and that's right, isn't it? Songs about soldiers should be sad, don't you think?

[thespianwordnerd]

Moffat coming back after years to let the new Scottish doctor fully sing the Skye Boat Song and explain the real history and context behind it when so many people only know it as the outlander theme...oh I have missed the way he writes Scottish characters. I see your vision sir and I salute you!

[bingqiv]

it’s just the way that the doctor still tragically loves the master despite everything.

the master has destroyed their planet and violated their people in the worst way possible and yet they’re still intrinsically entwined for eternity.

the master is who he thinks about when there’s a chance he may die and the master is who he thinks about when he survives.

missy said “my heart is maintained by the doctor” and i do think that’s mutual. the doctor’s hearts are maintained by the master, they always have been and always will be.

[workingonit-currently]

I know there were many options for what the Doctor could sing to stay calm in Boom but I just want to share my penny on why I think the Skye boat song was good.

In classic Whothe 2nd Doctor is a subtitled to play the Skye boat song on his recorder. It's like a soothing mechanism or something to keep him settled.

I like that the fact that the song was brought back recognises this and makes the idea that that song is soothing to the Doctor canon.

While I understand the Doctor could sing anything to calm them (the Venusian Lullaby) I don't think any song would comfort them as effectively.

The lullaby was only part of it, it was also meant to sooth the Doctor and thanks to the 2nd Doctor we know the Doctor is comforted by the Skye Boat song.

[twistedshipper]

In a land of myth, and a time of magic, the destiny of a great kingdom rests on the shoulders of a young boy. His name... Merlin.

[thetatardis]

soooooo in the soundtrack album for season 1 cubed they’re putting ncuti singing the skye boat song in it, right? right???????????????

[ohmerricat]

THE SKYE BOAT SONG!!! scotland foreverrr

[ohsogirlie]

[haventacluewhatimdoing]

THE FUCKING SKYE BOAT SONG!?!?! How many fucking vague Jamie references are we gonna get this series

And then Ruby says 'I was hoping for a beach'!?!?!?!

[brian-in-finance]

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Remember… whether you’ve forgotten the details or didn’t know about them to begin with, Nothing Compares is here to remind us of what it really meant to have no fucks left to give in pop culture — and the price at least one person paid for it. — Rolling Stone

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[anarchypumpkincowboy]

I was gonna live blog as I watched but I very quickly started crying and ignored my phone the whole way through. It’s gonna be a rewatch tho so I’ll blog on the next run through

Quick end of episode rapid fire thoughts

Capitalism and ai will doom us until we forcibly end the hold greed has over humanity. Organized religion is absolutely a part of the problem BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE Y’ALL JUST GOTTA STOP OPRESSING AND KILLING OTHERS IN THE NAME OF YOUR FUCKING GODS! Humanity has done and still has the potential to do amazing things but we gotta hold compassion higher than greed and control.

[doggytail-duck]

Fifteen my absolute beloved

[queersnakeboi]

When I print off sheet music for "Skye Boat Song" just because the 2nd Doctor plays it for Jamie on recorder. I'm gonna play it on clarinet.

Also the song "Skye Boat Song" is about the Battle of Culloden which is what Jamie and the others are fighting in in his first episode "The Highlanders".

[tmae3114]

"The Outlander theme song is the Skye Boat Song!"

*distant sounds of me gnawing on a wall in a desperate attempt to keep myself from starting a fight on the internet over something ridiculously pedantic*

[scotianostra]

On March 5th 1790, Flora MacDonald, the Jacobite heroine, died.

Flora is still one of the most romanticise figures in Scottish history, much has been written about her helping Charles Edward Stuart after his escape from Culloden when he was the most hunted man in Scotland.

Flora Macdonald was born at Milton, on South Uist, where you can still see the ruins of her childhood home. She grew up in the household of the chief of the Macdonalds of Clanranald, who firmly supported the Jacobite cause. When Bonnie Prince Charlie escaped following the Battle of Culloden in 1746 he went into hiding, depending on supporters to shelter him and hide him from his Hanoverian pursuers led by the Duke of Cumberland. At length, he arrived on the island of Benbecula, where it was decided that he should move on to Skye.

The island was under travel restrictions, and the prince could not take the risk of being spotted. A Jacobite supporter and distant kinsman named Captain Conn O'Neill asked Flora to help Charles escape. Macdonald herself did not support the Jacobite cause, but she was moved by the plight of the Jacobites after the Battle of Culloden, and at length she agreed. She later said that she acted from charity, and would have helped the Duke of Cumberland had she found him in a similar situation.

She obtained permission from Hugh Macdonald, commander of the local militia and her stepfather, to leave Benbecula. She was allowed to take two servants, and a crew of six sailors. Bonnie Prince Charlie was dressed as an Irish spinning maid named Betty Burke, and in that guise he sailed with Flora to Skye on 27 June 1746.

Unlike the scene made famous in the popular ‘Skye Boat Song’, the Prince did not leave baffled foes standing on the shore, and managed to make the crossing unchallenged. From Skye, he made his way at length to Moidart, where he boarded a French ship and escaped to refuge in Europe.

When Flora Macdonald’s role in the escape came to light she was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Though she had committed treason by helping Bonnie Prince Charlie, the public, even staunch Hanoverians, regarded her as a heroic figure, primarily because she was a woman, I have little doubt if it had been a man that helped the Prince in a similar way, he would have been executed.

She was released from the Tower in 1747. She married Allan Macdonald of Kingsburgh in 1750 and settled at Flodigarry on Skye, where she raised a family. In 1774 the couple and their 5 children emigrated to North Carolina. Her husband Alexander joined a regiment of Royal Highland Emigrants in the American War of Independence, where he was captured. He was released in an exchange of prisoners and took up a command in Nova Scotia.

In 1779 Macdonald returned to Scotland, braving an attack by privateers on the way, and settled on Skye where her husband joined her after the war was over. She died in at Kingsburgh in 1790 and was buried in the graveyard beside the 16th-century church at Kilmuir. Tradition says that she was buried in a shroud made from a bed-sheet used by Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Given her popularity as a Jacobite heroine, it is not surprising that a large memorial was erected by her grave, which became a popular destination for tourists. The original monument to Macdonald was destroyed in a gale in 1871. It was replaced by a new memorial designed by Alexander Ross in 1880. Ross’s design includes a 28 foot high Celtic Cross of granite, rising above a slender rectangular chest tomb, also of granite. A marble plaque was added in 1922.

The epitaph reads, 'Her name will be mentioned in history and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour’. It was written by Dr Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame, who met her during his famous tour of the Hebrides with James Boswell.

In 1884, just 4 years after the monument was erected, the Skye Boat Song was published, and the popular ballad ensured that Macdonald’s fame would not fade.

Here is a less well known song about not just Flora by Brian McNeill, you can tell through the song that Brian has not got a high opinion of the Prince, but holds Flora in the highest esteem as a strong woman.

Pics are of Flora’s grave and the statue of the lady herself at Inverness Castle that I took in 2014.

There’s a moment of your story That has always haunted me When you set out in yon open boat To help the poor man flee Was Charlie Stuart’s future Already plain to see Did you know he’d be a waster on his days

If you did, I’d give the world to find A single tear you cried From the Cuillins tae the Carolinas You showed us one and all The courage you could call From the tears that would not fall From your eyes

And after thirty years After all that you’d been through us been marriede haven’ been a Just a memory to rue As you watched your husband putting on His coat of scarlet hue To go and fight for German Geordie’s crown

But you never tried to hide behind The dreams of days gone by From the Cuillins tae the Carolinas You showed us one and all The courage you could call From the tears that would not fall From your eyes

And there’s times I think I see you When I find that kind of face When a woman’s independence Has kept a woman’s grace Where confidence and pride Refuse to know their place Or hide behind the easy tricks of beauty

For to me your lights are like the chimes Across the stormy skies From the Cuillins tae the Carolinas You showed us one and all The courage you could call From the tears that would not fall From your eyes

From the Cuillins tae the Carolinas Strong women rule us all With the courage that they call When the tears refuse to fall From their eyes.