Scotlandsmusic

The 'lad that's born to be king' was Prince Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir, the 'Young Pretender' who led the last Jacobite attempt to reinstate the Stewarts on the British throne. The words of the first stanza of the song (a Victorian pastiche) refer to the period when the Prince was fleeing from his pursuers, but Stevenson's haunting lines in the second stanza recall the bright days at the start of the campaign. The melody is also Victorian, though it possibly had its origin in a Gaelic folk-tune.