“All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border”

Then he took his fiddle out of its box. He played for a long time in the twilight, while Laura and Mary sat close to him and Ma rocked Carrie near by. – He played ‘Dixie Land,’ and ‘We’ll Rally Round the Flag, Boys!’ He played ‘All the Blue Bonnets Are Over the Border’… — On the Banks of Plum Creek, Chapter 26, “Grasshopper Eggs”

‘I’ll tell you what1’ Pa exclaimed. ‘Laura and Carrie, you get out there with Grace and let’s see you quick-step march! It’ll warm up your blood.’ – It was hard to leave the shelter of their huddled shawls, but they did as Pa said. Then his strong voice rang out with the singing fiddle… — The Long Winter, Chapter 4, “October Blizzard”

When it was bedtime, and the cold upstairs must be faced, Pa played them up to bed. – ‘Ready now, all together!’ he said. ‘Right, left, right, left– March!’ — The Long Winter, Chapter 17, “Seed Wheat”

     
Blue Bonnets Over the Border is mentioned as an “ancient air” to which words were written by Sir Walter Scott and first published in 1820 in The Monastery. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was born in Edinburgh, and as a poet and writer he devoted much of his time to the exploration of the Border country of Scotland. Although he suffered from polio as a child, he built up his strength roaming the countryside and grew to a height of over six feet and great physical endurance. He spent years with his grandparents and was fascinated by the old stories his grandmother told. As a teenager, Scott started to collect old ballads and translated into English those collected by others. Trained as an attorney, he was admitted to the bar and also held public office.

Scott’s first major work was published in 1802-3, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. He revised the work, and his The Lay of the Last Minstrel made him the most popular author of the day. As Clerk of Court of Session in Edinburgh beginning in 1806, Scott had plenty of free time to devote to his writing. In the 1810s he published several novels under the pseudonym Jebediah Cleisbotham or the “Author of Waverly”. The over twenty-five Waverly Novels included Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, and The Monastery, they were wildly popular in the 19th century.

In her Pioneer Girl manuscript, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote that the book Ma and Pa bought for her when taking sister Mary to the Blind Asylum in Iowa was Scott’s Poems, although this became Tennyson’s Poems in Little Town on the Prairie (see Chapter 13, “School Days”). Laura refers to the gift book both as having “green and gold” binding and “blue and gold” binding in Little Town on the Prairie; perhaps she received both Scott’s and Tennyson’s poems and each was a different color!

Wilder mentioned the Waverly Novels in The First Four Years (see “A Year of Grace”), saying that their neighbor, Mr. Sheldon (who Wilder called Mr. Sherwin), came to the door one day and poured the contents of a grain sack on the floor: “It was a paper-backed set of Waverly novels.” Reading the novels took Laura’s mind off her difficult pregnancy and the prairie weather. She wrote: “It was a long way from the scenes of Scott’s glamorous old tales to the little house on the bleak, wintry prairie, but Laura brought back from them some of their magic and music…”

“All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border” is a famous Scottish ballad about Bonnie Prince Charlie’s 1745 march into England. Traditional highland dress included a blue beret (bonnet), and due to the large number of Highlanders in the Jacobite Army, the sight of blue berets became associated with them. One legend is that the white cockade (a rosette or similar decoration worn as a badge on the hat) originated when Bonnie Prince Charlie picked a wild white rose and pinned it to his bonnet. “All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border” is still a popular military march today.

In the manuscript for On the Banks of Plum Creek, Wilder also included that Laura “recognized its stirring martial music” as Pa played the song on his fiddle. In The Long Winter, Pa plays “‘The Old Scotch March’ with its ringing call to combat that seemed to defy the raging winds outside…”

For more information about Bonnie Prince Charlie (1720-1788), see: http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/Charlie.html

Sir Walter Scott’s The Monastery is online in its entirety from Project Gutenberg. See: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6406. The poem that became “All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border” appears in Chapter 25.

     

“All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border” (BPC 26, TLW 4, 17)
     “March! March! Ettrick and Teviotdale!”
     “March! March Eskdale and Liddesdale!”