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If you've watched the television show Outlander, the theme song is probably very familiar to you by this point.

It's a version of an old tune called the Sky Boat Song.

I'll spare you my singing, but the lyrics go,

Sing me a song of a lass that is gone.

Say, could that last be I?

Mary of soul, she sailed on a day, over the sea to sky.

The entire tone of the song is extremely fitting, eerie and melancholy, and, alas, that is gone,

perfect for a show about a woman who disappears 200 years through time.

The actual original song was slightly modified for the television show.

There have been a number of versions of The Sky Boat song, since it was composed in 1782. But the most popular lyrics come from the famous

Scottish novelist Robert Lewis Stevenson, the man who wrote Treasure Island and created Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His poem from 1892 actually goes,

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone.

Say, could that lad be I?

It makes sense that Outlander changed the pronouns,

given that their television show is mostly about a woman. But the lad that Stevenson was referring to wasn't just a generic character

for a poem. He is a very specific lad, Charles Edward Stewart, or the Bonnie Prince Charlie.

The Sky Boat Song became popular in the 19th century for evoking a particularly romantic event

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