Annotation:Ye’re Welcome Charlie Stuart
Back to Ye’re Welcome Charlie Stuart
YE'RE WELCOME CHARLIE STUART. AKA and see “Charlie Stuart (2),” "Confederacy (The)," "Glen Morisone's Reel," "Kate of Garnavilla," “McAlman’s Reel,” “Queensbury House,” “Welcome Charlie Stewart(, You’re Welcome).” Scottish, Reel; New England, Polka. D Major (Honeyman, Kerr): B Flat Major (Miller & Perron). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The earliest record of the tune is in David Young's Duke of Perth MS (AKA the Drummond Castle MS), of 1734, where it appears as "Confederacy (The)." James C. Dick, in The Songs of Robert Burns, also finds “The Confederacy” in Walsh’s Caledonian Country Dances, published a few years later, around 1736. As “Glen Morisone’s Reel” it appears in Angus Cumming’s 1780 collection, written in cut time with dotted strathspey rhythms. Dance instructions, but no music, for the tune appear in the Menzies Manuscript, 1749, contained in the Atholl Collection of the Sandeman Library, Perth.
Scots poet Robert Burns wrote a song called “O Lovely Polly Stewart” to the air of “Ye’re Welcome, Charlie Stewart”, which was published in the Scots Musical Museum, vol. 5 (1796), beginning “The Flower it blaws, it fades, it fa’s.” It honors the daughter of William Stewart, factor at Closeburn Castle, some six miles north of Ellisland in Dumfriesshire. Dick maintains that that Burns’s song was formed on “one of the Jacobite ballads made after the highland rising of 1745,” obviously having “Ye’re Welcome” in mind. The playing of the air caused a riot in an Edinburgh theatre on the anniversary of the Battle of Culloden, then only four years distant. British officers in attendance called on the band to play “Culloden,” and angry citizens demanded “Ye’re Welcome, Charlie Stewart.”
For Cape Breton versions see “Welcome Charlie Stewart.”
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Gow (Complete Repository, vol. IV), 1817, p. 29. Honeyman (Strathspey, Reel and Hornpipe Tutor), 1898; p. 10. Johnson (The Scots Musical Museum, vol. V), 1787 1803, No. 471 (air to song “Lovely Polly Stewart”). Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 1), Set 6, No. 6, c. 1875; p. 6. Miller & Perron (101 Polkas), 1978; No. 27. Roche (Collection of Traditional Irish Music, vol. 2), 1912; No. 344. The Scottish Country Dance Book, 1930 57, Book 7, No. 1. Smith (Scottish Minstrel, vol. IV), 1820 24, p. 78. Surenne (Dance Music of Scotland), 1852; p. 9. Walsh (Caledonian Country Dances, vol. II), 1737, p. 54.
Recorded sources: