‘Sinclairsvisan’

This is another ‘Sinclair Song’, written by Anders Odel in 1739 and sung to the ‘later Folia’ melody. It spread widely throughout Sweden and was used to promote anti-Russian sentiment before the Russo-Swedish war of 1741-1743.

Malcolm Sinclair was an intelligence officer in the Swedish army, the son of William Sinclair of Sebay and Barbara Halcro, the daughter of Hugh Halcro of Orkney. The Sinclairs of Sebay descended from Sir William Sinclair of Warsetter. In July 1738, he carried a letter to  Constantinople on the subject of negotiations between Sweden and the Ottoman Empire to form a possible alliance against Russia. However, the Russian Minister Plenipotentiary in Stockholm learnt of it and forwarded the information and a portrait of Sinclair to the Russian government.

In April 1739, Sinclair left Constantinople with letters from the Sultan, the Grand Vizier and the Swedish envoy. He travelled with Ottoman and then Polish escorts, but between Grüneberg and Neustadt in Poland he was overtaken by two Russian officers, Captain Kütler and Lieutenant Lewitzki, who pulled him out of his coach, took his papers, and killed him.

The story was recounted by a French merchant who was travelling with Sinclair, but the Russian government denied any responsibility for the assassination in official letters to European courts.

The version of the song below is sung by Elena Kondratova from ‘Echoes from Poltava’, music in war and peace performed by the Swedish Ensemble Laude Novella and Insula Magica, a musical collective from Novosibirsk, Russia, and recorded in 2003. It has recently been sung by the Swedish singer and actor Sven-Bertil Taube (1934-2022), and released in 2020.

 

Major Malcolm Sinclair (1690-1781) by Johan Henrik Scheffel, 1728. Reproduced courtesy of Wikipedia

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