Flora's Lament for her Charlie

DESCRIPTION: Flora and Charlie go "out for to gaze, On the bonny, bonny banks of Benlomond." Both are leaving and they will never meet again. She describes him. "My true love was taken by the arrows of death, And now Flora does lament for her Charlie"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c.1849 (broadside, NLScotland RB.m.168(178))
KEYWORDS: love separation Scotland nonballad Jacobites
FOUND IN: Ireland
Roud #V12024
BROADSIDES:
Murray, Mu23-y3:013, "Flora's Lament For Her Charlie," R. McIntosh (Glasgow), 19C.
NLScotland, RB.m.168(178), "Flora's Lament for her Charlie," R. McIntosh (Glasgow), c.1849
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "So Dear Is My Charlie to Me (Prince Charlie)" (subject)
cf. "Loch Lomond" (verses) and references there
cf. "Flora MacDonald's Lament" (theme)
NOTES [194 words]: Broadside NLScotland RB.m.168(178) is the basis for the description.
The first two verses are very close to "Loch Lomond," as described in the notes to that song.
The commentary to broadside NLScotland, RB.m.168(178) notes that, after her involvement in Charles's escape, Flora "was tracked and was imprisoned by the Hanoverians and she spent a year in the tower of London. She was eventually released in 1747 and died in 1790." Charlie is Charles Edward (1720-1788), grandson of James II. - BS
There are several of these "Flora's Lament" type songs, some of which may in fact be the same. (This looks rather like "Flora MacDonald's Lament with a "Loch Lomond" preface tacked on.) The most famous is by James Hogg, but it is not this. This one gets one thing mostly right: Charles Stuart and Flora MacDonald never did meet again. But it was hardly a long-sundered love; they knew each other for only a few hours, and Flora married someone else in 1750 (though it is claimed that that was an arranged marriage). And they were never by Benlomond! -- they were in the Hebrides for the entire short time they were together. For details, see "Flora MacDonald's Lament,"- RBW
Last updated in version 7.0
File: BdFLfhC

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