Annotation:Ye’re Welcome Charlie Stuart
X:1 T:Ye’re Welcome Charlie Stuart L:1/8 M:C S:Honeyman – Strathspey, Reel and Hornpipe Tutor Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:D B|AFED G2 GB|AFED E2 EB|AFED GABd|AfdF D2 D:| |:A|defd gfec|defd ecBA|defd gfeg|faAB d2 d:|]
YE'RE WELCOME CHARLIE STUART. AKA and see “Charlie Stewart (2),” "Confederacy (1) (The)," "Down the Bank," "Down with the Peebles," "Farewell to Brickyard," "Glen Morisone's Reell," "Favorite (2)," "Kate of Garnevilla," “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 (1) (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.”
