I Hae Been At(In) Crookieden

Il testo è un frammento di una ballata giacobita pubblicata in “Jacobite Relics”, 1810, così Hogg scrive”Is highly popular, and sung in many different ways. It appears, from the numberless copies I have got, that the song had been very short at first, and that parts had been added, now and then, by different hands, until some of the most common editions appear rather like a medley than a regular ballad. This set may be received as the most perfect, all the good verses being in it, and a kind of uniformity throughout. I have been told the song was originally composed by an itinerant ballad-singer, a man of great renown in that profession, ycleped ” mussel-mou’ed Charlie;”* and that while in his possession, it consisted only of four full stanzas, the two first, the first halves of the third and sixth, and the last verse, was made up of the last four lines of the sixth, and the following four:
2 bis. But a’ the whigs maun gang to hell,
Bonnie laddie, Highland laddie ;
That sang Charlie made himsel’,
Bonnie laddie, Highland laddie.
[*Si tratta di Charles Lesly (1687-1792), soprannominato “Mussel mou’d Charlie”]

Un paio di versi sono stati scritti da Robert Burns con intento satirico e pubblicati nello “Scots Musical Museum” Volume IV, 1792
tratto da http://terreceltiche.altervista.org/hi...

NOTE
1) il “Bel Carletto” il pretendente al trono di Scozia che, giovane e prestante nel suo abito tradizionale scozzese, riuscì ad esercitare un grande fascino sugli Highlanders!
2) “Crooked den”= Hell
3) Guglielmo Duca di Cumberland (1721-1765) il macellaio di Culloden è descritto come un mostro sanguinario che subisce la giusta punizione all’inferno
4) letteralmente”forte il riso correva per l’Inferno”