Saturday 5 March 2016
Tune of the Day: Wha'll be King but Charlie
Traditional Scottish tune
In his 1815 book The Airs and Melodies Peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland and the Isles, Simon Fraser defines “Wha'll be King but Charlie” as a “grand old Jacobite rallying song”, and further states that it “is a melody common to Ireland as well as the Highlands of Scotland,—but, having been known in this country since 1745, as one of the incentives of rebellion; if originally Irish, some of the troops or partisans engaged for Charles from that country might have brought it over,—but the melody is simple and beautiful, assimilating itself very much to the style of either”.