Scotlandsmusic

The battle of Prestonpans (21 September 1745) was fought between the rebel Highland army of Prince Charles Edward Stewart - "Bonny Prince Charlie", the "Young Pretender" to the British throne - and the Government forces of King George II under Sir John Cope. Cope's well-armed and highly trained battalions disintegrated before a furious assault by the Highlanders, whereupon Cope himself fled with great speed to Berwick, becoming (in the words of a sarcastic onlooker) "the first General in Europe who had brought the first tidings of his own defeat." Adam Skirving's ironic, blood-thirsty verses portray the whole affair very much from the victorious Jacobite view-point. Skirving, a farmer from Haddington, was an able versifier, and reportedly "one of the wittiest and most whimsical of mankind". This tune was first published in The Scots Musical Museum of 1790.