> Steeleye Span > Songs > Rogues in a Nation

Rogues in a Nation

[ Roud 5516 ; trad.; from Hogg's Jacobite Reliques]

[From Hogg's Jacobite Reliques, Trad. arr. Hart / Johnson / Kemp / Knight / Prior]

This is the title track of Steeleye Span's album Parcel of Rogues; see also Cam Ye O'er Frae France. The record's sleeve notes say (with some corrections by Bernard Leak):

The Stuart dynasty acceded to the English throne in 1603 when James VI of Scotland also became James I of England, but their rule ended in 1714 after James II was forced to flee to France in 1688 and was succeeded by his daughters Mary II 1688-94 (she reigned jointly with her husband William, the Stadtholder of Holland, who reigned solo after her death until 1702) and Anne 1702-14.

Three attempts were made by the Jacobites to reinstate the “Kings across the Water” to their former glory. The first two, in 1690 and in 1715, were never really a serious threat to George I, a German prince of Stuart descent from the House of Hanover, then occupying the English throne. The third, led by Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie; see also the song Prince Charlie Stuart on Steeleye Span's album Please to See the King ), had some initial success but finally ended in the calamitous defeat on Culloden Moor in 1746.

The rebel clans always believed themselves to have been betrayed, both in parliament and on the battlefield, by their fellow countrymen.

Lyrics

Farewell to all our Scottish fame
Farewell our ancient glory
Farewell even to our Scottish name
Sae fam'd in martial story
Now Sark runs over the Solway sands
And Tweed runs to the ocean
To mark where England's province stands:
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

What force or guile could not subdue
Through many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor's wages
The English steel we could disdain
Secure in valour's station
But English gold has been our bane:
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

I would, or I had seen the day
That treason thus could sell us
My auld grey head had lain in clay
Wi' Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour
I'll make this declaration
We were bought and sold for English gold:
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Patrick Montague for correcting the lyrics.