Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Songs of Scotland prior to Burns

THE BRAES OF KILLIECRANKIE.
43
Had they bent their bows like Highland trews,
And made as lang a stay, man,
They'd saved their king, that sacred thing,
And Willie 'd run awa', then. 1
A professor Kennedy (qu. Kerr ?), of Aberdeen, is stated by
James Hogg to have produced a Latin ballad on the Battle of
Killiecrankie, being in some degree a paraphrase of this rough
vernacular song, but including references to heroes of the cavaliei
party not here adverted to. It begins as follows :
Gramius notabilis coegerat montanos,
Qui clypeis et gladiis fugarunt Anglicanos :
Fugerunt Vallicolse, atque Puritani ;
Cacavere Batavi et Cameroniani. 2
THE BRAES OF KILLIECRANKIE.
There is a second popular ballad on the Battle of Killiecrankie,
of much more comic expression than the preceding. It has been
given with its melody in Johnson's Museum, but with some
improvements from the hand of Burns.
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1 From Herd's Collection, 1776.
2 Of this clever production Sir Walter Scott, in his turn, wrote a
versified translation, which was printed in Chambers's Journal, First
Series, No. 48.