Our tour guide today on the bus tour was fantastic, full of anecdotes, and overall a humourous Scotsman. However, when we were returning from Loch Lomond, he told us about this song and sang a few renditions of it. The story surrounding the song goes a little like this: back in the 1750s, there was a lot of unrest due to the Jacobite Rebellions (rebellions in favor of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was an 'heir' to the Scottish throne). The English had captured two Scottish Jacobites, and the law at the time was that one out of every two Jacobites captured would be put to death. That meant that one of these friends would die. The jailer for the evening gave them the choice to see who would live and who would die. Neither of the friends said a word, but one of them sat down and wrote this song.
There is a bit of dire symbolism in this poem. The 'high road' was supposed to be the road of the living, and the 'low road' was the road of the dead. The spirits of the dead could travel more quickly than the living, and so the friend who agreed to die for his friend would see Scotland, his home, too.
Or so goes the story according to the tour guide.
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