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Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne (16 August 1766 – 26 October 1845) was a Scottish songwriter. Many of her songs, such as "Will ye no' come back again?" and "Charlie is my Darling", remain popular today, almost two hundred years after they were written. She often set her words to traditional folk melodies, but sometimes contributed her own music as well.

Carolina and her contemporary Robert Burns were influenced by the Jacobite heritage in their establishment of a distinct Scottish identity, through what they both called national song. Perhaps in the belief that her work would not be taken seriously if it were known that she was a woman, Carolina went to considerable lengths to conceal her identity when submitting work for publication, even from her husband. Early on she called herself Mrs Bogan of Bogan, but feeling that gave too much away she often attributed her songs to the gender-neutral B.B., S.M., or Unknown.

Although both working in the same genre of what might today be called traditional Scottish folksongs, Nairne and Burns express rather different attitudes in their compositions. Nairne tends to focus on an earlier romanticised version of the Scottish way of life, tinged with sadness for what is gone forever, whereas Burns displays an optimism about a better future to come.

Life

Carolina Oliphant was born at the Auld Hoose, Gask, Perthshire on 16 August 1766, the fourth child of the three sons and four daughters of Laurence Oliphant (1724–1792), laird of Gask, and his wife Margaret Robertson (1739–1774); the Auld Hoose was her father's ancestral family home. Margaret was the eldest daughter of Duncan Robertson of Struan, the chief of Clan Donnachie, which fought on the Jacobite side in the uprisings of 1715 and '45. Carolina's father Laurence was also a staunch Jacobite, thus she was given the name Carolina in memory of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

Following the failure of the Jacobite rising of 1745 the Oliphant family – along with the Robertsons and the Nairnes – were accused of high treason, exiled to France, and their estates seized. They remained in France for nineteen years, during which time Carolina's parents were married at Versailles, in 1755. The government eventually allowed Laurence's kinsmen to buy back part of the Gask estate, and the couple returned to Scotland two years before Carolina's birth. Both of her parents, who were cousins, were grandchildren of Lord Nairne, who had commanded the second line of the Jacobite army at the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745 and subsequently been sentenced to death the following year.

The upbringing of Laurence's children reflected his Jacobite allegiance and their everyday lives were filled with reminders that he considered the Stewarts the rightful heirs to the throne. A governess was employed to ensure the girls did not speak with a broad Scottish dialect as their father did not consider it ladylike; general tuition was provided by a local minister – the children's prayer books had the Hanoverian sovereign's names obscured by those of the Stewarts – and music and dance teachers were also engaged. Delicate as a child, Carolina gradually developed into a genteel young woman, much admired by fashionable families; she was well educated, able to paint and an accomplished musician familiar with traditional songs.

As a teenager, Carolina was betrothed to William Murray Nairne, another of Lord Nairne's grandchildren, and who became the 5th Lord Nairne in 1824. Born in Ireland to a Jacobite family from Perthshire whose lands had also been forfeited, he regularly visited Gask. It was only after he was promoted to the position of assistant inspector-general at a Scottish barracks that the pair were able to be married on 2 June 1806. The couple settled in Edinburgh, where their only son, also named William Murray Nairne (1808–1837), was born two years later. He was a sickly child and, following her husband's death in 1830, Lady Nairne lived with her son in Ireland and on the continent. The change in climate was not as beneficial to his health as hoped; he died in Brussels in December 1837. She returned to Gask in 1843, but following a stroke her health deteriorated; she died on 26 October 1845 and was buried in the family chapel.

Songwriting

External videos
"The Hundred Pipers", by Carolina Nairne, sung by Kenneth McKellar
Will Ye No Come Back Again? sung by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger

Carolina began writing songs shortly after her father's death in 1792. She was a contemporary of the best-known Scottish songwriter and poet Robert Burns. Although the two never met, together they forged a national song for Scotland, that in the words of Dianne Dugaw, Professor of English and Folklore at the University of Oregon, "lies somewhere between folk-song and art-song." For both, Jacobite history was a powerful influence. Carolina could read music and played the harpsichord, which allowed her to contribute some of her own tunes. Three tunes almost certainly written by Carolina are those to "Will "Ye No Come Back Again", "The Rowan Tree", and "The Auld House", as no earlier printed versions have been found.

What was probably her first composition – The Pleughman (ploughman) – may have been a tribute to Burns. Just like him, Carolina's songs were at first circulated by being performed, but her interest in Scottish music and song brought her into contact with Robert Purdie, an Edinburgh publisher. Purdie was gathering together "a collection of the national airs, with words suited for refined circles" to which Carolina contributed a significant number of original songs, all without attribution to her. The collection was published in six volumes as The Scottish Minstrel from 1821 to 1824, with music edited by Robert Archibald Smith.

The bulk of Carolina's more than 80 songs have Jacobitism as their backdrop, perhaps unsurprising given her family background and upbringing. Examples of the best known of such works include "Wha'll be King but Charlie?" "Charlie is my darling", "The Hundred Pipers", "He's owre the Hills", and "Will ye no' come back again?". In part she wrote such songs as a tribute to the mid-18th century struggles of her parents and grandparents, but the Jacobite influence in her work runs deep. In "The Laird o' Cockpen", for instance, Carolina echoes the Jacobite distaste for the Whiggish displays and manners of the noveau riche in post-Union Scotland, as does "Caller Herrin'".

Most of Carolina's songs were written before her marriage in 1806. She completed her last – "Would Ye Be Young Again?" – at the age of 75, adding a note in the manuscript that perhaps reveals much of her attitude to life: "The thirst of the dying wretch in the desert is nothing to the pining for voices which have ceased forever!" Indeed Carolina's songs often focus on grief, on what can be no more, and romanticise a traditional way of Scottish life. Her contemporary Burns, on the other hand, had an eye on a global future – "a brotherhood of working people 'the warld o'er' that's 'comin yet'".

Anonymity

Carolina concealed her achievements as a songwriter throughout her life; they only became public on the posthumous publication of "Lays from Strathearn" (1846). She took pleasure in the popularity of her songs, and may have been concerned that could be jeopardised if it became public knowledge that she was a woman. It also explains why she soon switched from Mrs Bogan of Bogan to the gender-neutral BB when submitting her contributions to The Scottish Minstrel, and even disguised her handwriting. On one occasion, pressed by her publisher Purdie who wanted to meet his best contributor, she appeared disguised as an elderly gentlewoman from the country. She succeeded in persuading Purdie that she was merely a conduit for the songs she gathered from simple countryfolk, and not their author. But the entire editorial committee of the Minstrel – all of them female – was aware of her identity for instance, as were her sister, nieces and grandniece. On the other hand she shared her secret with very few men, not even her husband; as she wrote to a friend in the 1820s "I have not told even Nairne lest he blab".

Consideration for her husband may have been another of Carolina's motives for maintaining her anonymity. Despite his Jacobite family background he had served with the British Army since he was a youth, and it might have caused him some professional embarrassment if it had become widely known that his wife was writing songs in honour of the Jacobite rebels of the previous century. Somewhat mitigating against that view however is that Carolina maintained her secrecy for fifteen years after his death.

References

Notes

1. S.M. stands for Scottish Minstrel.
2. Nairne managed to escape to France, where he remained in exile until his death in 1770.
3. Caller means chilled, frozen.

Citations

1. ^ McGuirk, Carol (Summer 2006), "Jacobite History to National Song: Robert Burns and Carolina Oliphant (Baroness Nairne)", The Eighteenth Century, 47 (2/3), University of Pennsylvania Press: 253–287, JSTOR 41468002
2. ^ Donaldson, William (2004), "Oliphant, Carolina, Lady Nairne (1766–1845), songwriter", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.), Oxford University Press, retrieved 6 January 2018 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
3. "Sketch of Lady Nairne", Aberdeen Evening Express, no. 4353, p. 4, 8 September 1894 – via British Newspaper Archive {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)
4. Thomson (1875), p. 190
5. Robinson, Kristen (2004), "Nairne, John, styled third Lord Nairne and Jacobite second earl of Nairne", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.), Oxford University Press, retrieved 6 January 2018 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
6. ^ Fry (2014), p. 185
7. Rogers (1869), pp. 30–31
8. ^ Bold (2006), p. 286
9. "A modest genius", The Akron Beacon Journal, vol. xxvii, no. 164, p. 10, 18 June 1897
10. Rogers (1869), p. 37
11. "Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne, 1766–1845. Songwriter", National Galleries Scotland, archived from the original on 4 January 2018, retrieved 4 January 2018 {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
12. Tytler & Watson (1871), p. 140
13. Tytler & Watson (1871), p. 143
14. "Wi' a 100 Pipers (with lyrics) – Kenneth Mc Kellar". YouTube. Retrieved 10 January 2018. {{cite web}}: Invalid |mode=CS2 (help)
15. "Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger – Will Ye No Come Back Again?", YouTube, retrieved 10 January 2018
16. Dugaw, Dianne (Summer 2006), "On the "Darling Songs" of Poets, Scholars, and Singers: An Introduction", The Eighteenth Century, 47 (2/3), University of Pennsylvania Press, JSTOR 41467995

Bibliography

• Bold, Valentina (2006), Ewan, Elizabeth; Innes, Sue; Reynolds, Siân (eds.), The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women: From the Earliest Times to 2004, Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 978-0-7486-1713-5
• Fry, Michael (2014), A Higher World: Scotland 1707-1815, Birlinn, ISBN 978-0-85790-832-2
• Rogers, Charles (1869), Life and Songs of the Baroness Nairne; with a memoir and poems of Caroline Oliphant the younger, Charles Griffin
• Thomson, Thomas (1875), "Nairn, Carolina", Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, vol. 2, Blackie & Sons
• Tytler, Sarah; Watson, J. L. (1871), The Songstresses of Scotland, vol. 2, Strahan

External links

• Works by Carolina Nairne at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Carolina Nairne at Open Library

• Use dmy dates from November 2012
• 1766 births
• 1845 deaths
• People from Perth and Kinross
• Scottish songwriters
• Scottish song collectors
• 19th-century Scottish people
• 19th-century Scottish writers