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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 3: Notes below middle C
The Skye Boat Song
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 6/8, 24 bars. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
A Scottish rowing song in a slow, rocking 6/8, two big beats to a bar, written out as chorus, verse and chorus. The right hand covers an octave, from the G below middle C to the G above it, so the hand moves between the low notes of “Speed bon-nie” and the high G of “wing”. Each chorus line opens with a dotted quaver and a semiquaver, long-short (the verse lines open with even quavers), and in bar 1 “like a” is two quick semiquavers on the same note. The verse sits lower and leans on A minor, which makes it sound stormy. The left hand rocks between a bass note and a chord, through C, G, F, A minor and D minor.
Practice tip: Feel two slow beats in each bar, like oars pulling. Play the verse a little louder than the chorus, then come back gently for “Speed, bon-nie boat”.
The words
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing, onward, the sailors cry; carry the lad that's born to be king over 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. Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing, onward, the sailors cry; carry the lad that's born to be king over the sea to Skye.
A short history
The tune comes from a Gaelic rowing song. Anne Campbell MacLeod (1855 to 1921) heard boatmen sing it on a trip to Skye in the 1870s and wrote down what she remembered. The English words were then written by Sir Harold Boulton (1859 to 1935), and the two published the song in 1884 in their book Songs of the North. It is number 3772 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
Boulton’s words tell the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie escaping after the Jacobites were defeated at Culloden in 1746. Disguised as a serving maid, he was rowed over the sea to Skye with the help of Flora MacDonald.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a different set of words for the same tune. The song was first recorded in 1899 and is often sung as a lullaby.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Tune collected by Anne Campbell MacLeod, 1870s
- Words
- Harold Boulton, 1884
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 6/8
- Length
- 24 bars
- Tempo
- Rocking, dotted crotchet = 48
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 108 of 201)
- Type
- Folk song
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
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