Folk music

The McCalmans are one of Scotland's most popular folk groups. They have been playing together for a long time and have many fans both in Scotland and throughout the world. Their three-part harmony singing and good humour win them friends wherever they perform.

After studying at the Edinburgh College of Art they gave up their studies to follow their main interest, folk music.

When they were at college they began to learn the less well-known traditional songs and they still sing many of them today.

As well as singing, they play a variety of instruments between them. The guitar is of course one of the most important, but they also play the mandolin and the penny whistle. Although these whistles cost more than a penny nowadays, you can still buy them for a very small amount of money!

Rise and Follow Charlie! is the title of one of the most popular songs the McCalmans sing. It dates from the time of the Jacobite rebellions when Scotland fought her last battle against the English. (Jacobites were supporters of James II of Scotland.)

In 1707 a special treaty united the governments of Scotland and England. The Protestant Church replaced the Catholic Church as the ruling church in Scotland.

However, many of the people who lived in the Highlands and Western Isles did not welcome this change. They still supported the grandson of the Catholic James II, who had been exiled in 1688. His name was Prince Charles Edward Stewart and he was known as Bonnie Prince Charlie because he was young and handsome ('bonnie' means 'good-looking').

Charlie spent twenty years in Rome preparing to win back the Crown of Great Britain for his father and himself, and then returned to Scotland. The Highlanders were very proud that he still spoke Gaelic, and wore the traditional tartan kilt. In 1745, he landed in the Western Isles, then with 2,500 men, he marched south to Perth, Stirling and Edinburgh. There, on 17th September, his father was proclaimed king of Scotland and England. Four days later the Jacobites defeated the English army at Prestopans.

On 1st November Charlie led his men as far south as Derby in England. However not as many Jacobite supporters joined them in England as they had hoped, and Charlie decided to retreat. The Jacobites returned to Scotland on 21st December and defeated yet another English army at Falkirk on 17th January 1746. By April of that year, however, the Duke of Cumberland had built up a huge army of 9,000 Protestant soldiers from England and Europe. On 16th April they met Charlie's army of 5,000 tired and hungry men in the wind and the rain at Culloden. There was a terrible and bloody battle and the Jacobites were defeated.

Charlie wandered in exile in the Scottish Highlands and in Europe. There was a reward of £ 30,000 for his capture but the Highlanders, though poor, never betrayed the man they loved so much.

There are many songs like the McCalmans' Rise and Follow Charlie! that tell Charlie's sad story. The most famous one is known all over the world:

My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean!

After the rebellion of 1745, the Highlanders were forbidden to carry weapons, to speak their own language, Gaelic, or wear their own dress. Much of their land was sold by the British government.

Susan Sheerin, Jonathan Seath, Gillian White: Spotlight on Britain; Oxford University Press, 1985, page 80 f.