Over the Sea to Skye

Outlander fans are familiar with this song:

....

what I didn't know is that the origianl lyrics were about the Battle of Culloden: 

Wikipedia had the original lyrics:

which remember the flight of Bonny Prince Charles from the British, and the brutal highland clearances.

Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,Onward! the sailors cry;Carry the lad that's born to be KingOver the sea to Skye

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

[Chorus]
Many's the lad fought on that day,Well the claymore could wield,When the night came, silently layDead on Culloden's field.
[Chorus]
Burned are their homes, exile and deathScatter the loyal men;Yet ere the sword cool in the sheathCharlie will come again.

that pretty well describes the background of the Outlander saga.

But the song's lyrics were rewritten by Robert Louis Stevenson, and those are the lyrics that are used for the show: and here are the first and last verses that are sung for the TV show:

 [Chorus:] Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,Say, could that lad be I?Merry of soul he sailed on a dayOver the sea to Skye...

Billow and breeze, islands and seas,Mountains of rain and sun,All that was good, all that was fair,All that was me is gone.

Stevenson's lyrics hint at another aspect of the Island of Skye: the realm of Faerie:


TeaAtTrianon links to the AlishSinclair blog post about Skye:

lots of lovely photos, and it includes this about Dunvegan Castle:

Displayed inside the castle, so no photos, is the ancient and tattered Fairy Flag. There are many stories and traditions surrounding this relic and its origins. The tale favoured in the information provided to visitors is the one in which the Chief of Clan Macleod marries a fairy. The couple have a child together but the fairy knows she has to return to her people in Fairyland. She leaves the magical flag, imbued with protective powers, wrapped round the baby, and this she does a few miles away at the Fairy Bridge:

Dunvegan Castle
from wikipedia commons

wikipedia also has a post on the fairy flag there:

the Fairy Flag was entrusted to a family of hereditary standard bearers. Only the eldest male of this family was ever allowed to unfurl the flag; the first such hereditary standard bearer was given the honour of being buried inside the tomb of the chiefs, on the sacred isle of Iona. Tradition states that the flag was unfurled at several clan battles in the 15th and 16th centuries; the flag's magical powers are said to have won at least one of them. Another 19th-century tradition linked the flag to a prophecy which foretold the downfall of Clan MacLeod; but it also prophesied that, in the "far distant future", the clan would regain its power and raise its honour higher than ever before...

and Skye is located here:

 GNU Free Documentation License.

Dunvegan Castle website discusses the flag.


and no, although Trump's mom was a MacLeod, she wasn't born on Skye, but on the Island of Lewis, nearby.

hmm.. what was that about "in the "far distant future", the clan would regain its power and raise its honour higher than ever before"?