Dance Blue Bonnets 588

March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale,
  Why the deil dinna ye march forward in order?
March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale,
  All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border.
    Many a banner spread,
    Flutters above your head,
  Many a crest that is famous in story.
    Mount and make ready then,
    Sons of the mountain glen,
Fight for the Queen and the old Scottish glory.

Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing,
  Come from the glen of the buck and the roe;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
  Come with the buckler, the lance and the bow.
    Trumpets are sounding,
    War steeds are bounding,
  Stand to your arms, then, and march in good order;
    England shall many a day
    Tell of the bloody fray,
When the Blue Bonnets came over the Border.
– Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), from The Monastery

The original, upon which Scott based his ballad, is “General Leslie’s March to Longmarston Moor”, and it, indeed, tells the true story.

March, march! why the deil dinna ye march?
  Stand to your arms, my lads; fight in good order.
Front about, ye muskets all,
  Till ye come to the English border.
  Stand till’t and fight like men,
  True gospel to maintain;
The parliament’s blythe to see us a-coming –
  (The bishops, a popish breed,
  When you have crossed the Tweed,
Will faint to hear your sanctified drumming.)

March, march! &c.
  When to the kirk we come,
  We’ll purge it ilka room,
Frae popish relics and sic innovations,
  That a’ the world may see,
  There’s nane in the right but we,
Of the (guid) auld Scottish nation.

March, march! &c.
  Jenny shall wear the hood,
  Jockie the sark of God,
And the kist-fu’ o’ whistles that maks sic a’ cleerie,
  Our pipers braw
  Shall hae them a’ –
(Laud and his crew shall gae tapsal-teerie!)

Whatever come on it, whatever come on it,
Busk up your plaids, my lads, cock up your bonnets!

This rude, anonymous piece was published by Allan Ramsay and the lines within the parentheses were added at a later date.

At the onset of the Civil War between Charles I and Parliament, a strong appeal was made by Cromwell to the Scots to join Parliament in the clash. In 1643, the General Assembly drafted a Solemn League and Covenant agreeing to fight against Charles if the Presbyterian church would be established throughout Britain, to the exclusion of Episcopacy and Popery. Naturally, the hard-pressed Parliament would agree to anything at that stage.

Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven and Lord Balgonie (1580–1661), set off across the Border with his “Blue Bonnets”, 18,000 foot soldiers and 3,000 cavalrymen, and marched toward York. On 2 July, 1644, the Scots stood alongside the forces of Parliament at Marston Moor. On the other side was the army of Charles, under the command of Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Son of Frederick V, Elector of the Palatine, grandson of James VI and nephew of Charles, Rupert had earned himself the title of “the mad cavalier”. The battle commenced about four in the afternoon and ended before the summer darkness fell. The Royalists were completely routed in a very short and very bloody battle on the grand scale.

The Scots under General Leslie fought bravely at Marston Moor, though they received no “mention in dispatches” for their pains, and, disillusioned with Cromwell’s army loudly taking full credit for the victory, they marched away. From then on the Civil War in so far as the Scots were concerned degenerated to the same old story of betrayal, broken promises and devastating clan warfare that exhausted the country both economically and spiritually.

Forty-four years after Marston Moor a regiment was raised in Edinburgh by the 3rd Earl of Leven. Called “Leven’s” or “The Edinburgh Regiment”, a thousand enthusiastic men enrolled in a matter of a few hours. The 3rd Earl, often mistakenly referred to as David Leslie, was actually David Melville. The son of George Melville, 1st Earl of Melville, he inherited the Leven title from his mother, Catherine, Countess of Leven, the grand-daughter of Alexander Leslie, who had died at the age of eighty. A leader like his great-grandfather, the earl fought for William III at the Pass of Killiecrankie and was commander-in-chief of the Scottish forces that quelled the abortive Jacobite rising of 1708.

Leven’s Regiment became, under George III, the King’s Own Borders, the 25th of Foot. In 1887 it was renamed the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and in 1897 the regiment adopted the Leslie tartan. It was its traidtional right to march, colours flying, bayonets fixed, through the city of Edinburgh while the band played the regimental march, “Blue Bonnets”.