Another interpretation is that the song is sung by the lover of a captured rebel set to be to be executed in London following a show trial. The heads of the executed rebels were then set upon pikes and exhibited in all of the towns between London and Glasgow in a procession along the "high road" (the most important road), while the relatives of the rebels walked back along the "low road" (the ordinary road travelled by peasants and commoners).
For my setting I attempt to capture the two interpretations by eliciting an idyllic sense of love and beauty, portraying courage in the face of death and rendering the bittersweet experience of losing what we loved while keeping the cherished memories alive.
Text:
By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond
Where me and my true love were ever want to gae
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
O you’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
I mind when we parted in yon shady glen
On the steep, steep side of Ben Lomond
Where in purple hue, the highland hills we view
And the moon looks out from the gloamin’.
O you’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
The wee birdies sing and the wild flowers spring
And in sunshine the waters are sleeping
But the broken heart, it can never spring again
Though the woeful may cease from their greeting.
O you’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.