March of the Cameron Men, The

DESCRIPTION: The Cameron men swear to follow their chief "or die by his side." "Each Cameron knows he may tread o'er the heather no more." The chief says, "whatever men dare they can do."
AUTHOR: Mary Maxwell Campbell (according to Rogers and Bennett/Downey-JeromeJustOneMoreSong)
EARLIEST DATE: 1829 (date written according to Bennett/Downey-JeromeJustOneMoreSong); before 1839 (broadside, Bodleian Bod9200 Firth c.26(254))
KEYWORDS: rebellion nonballad patriotic Jacobites
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Bennett/Downey-JeromeJustOneMoreSong 18, pp. 123-126, "The Cameron Men" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Charles Rogers, The Scottish Minstrel; The Songs of Scotland Subsequent to Burns (London: William P Nimmo, 1876), pp. 419-420, "The March of the Cameron Men" (1 text)
The Lyric Gems of Scotland (Glasgow: David Jack, 1856 ("Digitized by Internet Archive for NLS")), p. 4, "The March of the Cameron Men" (1 text) (1 tune)
Wehman's [Universal Songster] Collection of 96 Songs No. 6 (New York, n.d. [1890-1891] ("Digitized by Internet Archive")), p. 21, "The March of the Cameron Men" (1 text)
Old Favourites Reprinted from The Family Herald and Weekly Star 1898 (Montreal: The Family Herald Publishing Co., 1898), p. 108, "The March of the Cameron Men" (1 text) (1 tune)
Roud #24300
RECORDINGS:
Jerome Downey, "The Cameron Men" (on NFJDowney01)
Hector MacIsaac and Jerome Downey, "The March of the Cameron Men" (on NFHMacIsaac01)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Bod9200 Firth c.26(254), "The March of the Cameron Men" ("There's many a man of the Cameron clan"), T. Pearson(Manchester), 1813-1838; also Bod21267 2806 c.11(62), Bod12240 Harding B 11(4214), Bod21851 Harding B 11(523), "March of the Cameron Men"
Murray, Mu23-y2:060, "The Cameron Men" ("There is many a man of the Cameron clan"), James Lindsay (Glasgow), 19C
SAME TUNE:
The March of Loyalty (according to Murray Mu23-y2:060)
NOTES [363 words]: Reid, p. 11: "...without the eventual, albeit reluctant, adherence of Donald Cameron of Lochiel it is unlikely that any real headway would have been made [by Bonnie Prince Charlie's invasion of Scotland in 1745]."
Magnusson, p. 589: "...Monday, 12 August 1745 was a long, long day for Prince Charles Edward Stuart.... How many clansmen would respond to his call to arms? ... The clan which really mattered, however, was that of Cameron of Lochiel -- Young Lochiel, son of the chief who had taken part in the 1715 Rising and was now living in exile in France. Prince Charles had been in contact with Young Lochiel, who had been dismayed by the enterprise but had reluctantly given his bond. At four o'clock in the afternoon the sound of the pipes heralded the coming of the Cameron men -- eight hundred of Lochiel's Camerons...."
Magnusson, p. 620: "[At the final battle of Culloden], Cameron of Lochiel, whose ankles had been shattered by a cannonball, was carried from the field on the shoulders of a faithful clansman." Young/Adair, p. 271, reports that he followed his father to France, but died in 1748 "of brain-fever." His men had been slaughtered; the map on p. 264 shows the Camerons second from the right of the first line that charged the English army; they charged into a British battery and were taken in flank by the British cavalry. - RBW
Bennett/Downey-JeromeJustOneMoreSong: "...August 1746 when the loyal clan chief, Cameron of Lochiel, marched with his men from Loch Arkaig to Glenfinnan, to join Prince Charles Edward Stuart in raising the standard for King James VIII... [to] the disastrous defeat at Culloden the following April."
Regarding Wehman's Collection Norm Cohen writes, "Songbook #6 was undated, but most likely 1884-5." Each page except the first is headed Wehman's Universal Songster. The first page is undated but states, "Published Quarterly -- January, April, July and October. Norm Cohen's Finding List ... has WE29, Universal Songster as "monthly serial ... [beginning] 1881 (Norm Cohen, A Finding List of American Secular Songsters Published Between 1860 and 1899 (Middle Tennessee State University,Murfreesboro,2002), p. 150). - BS
Bibliography

Magnusson: Magnus Magnusson, Scotland: The Story of a Nation, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000
Reid: Stuart Reid, 1745: A Military History of the Last Jacobite Rising, Sarpedon, 1966
Young/Adair: Peter Young & John Adair, Hastings to Culloden: Battles of Britain, 1964, 1979; third edition published by Sutton Publishing, 1996

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