John, Come Kiss Me Now

DESCRIPTION: "John, come kiss me now (x3) And make no more ado." Alternate form: "John, come kis me now, now, now, O John come kiss me now! John come kiss me by and bye, And make nae mair ado."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: tune said to daite to 1609 (Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic)
KEYWORDS: courting nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, pp. 147-148, "John, Come Kiss Me Now" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic I, pp. 268-269, "John, Come Kiss Me Now" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
DT, JOHNKISS* (the Burns version)
ADDITIONAL: James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #343, pp. 476-477, "John come kiss me now.." (1 text, 1 tune, from 1792)
Roud #5521
NOTES [148 words]: Roud links this with Randolph's "Come and Kiss Me, Robin." Possible, but I need a lot more evidence. Which may be hard to come by. Chappell/Woodridge states that only the first stanza survived. This is probably because it was indelicate. Burns had two additional stanzas, but how much of that is Burns and how much is traditional I do not know.
Although the song has survived poorly (apart from the Burns version, the only references seem to be in Herd and Chappell), it was apparently popular in its time. According to Edward J. Cowan, "Calvinism and the Survival of Folk," printed in Cowan: Edward J. Cowan, editor, The People's Past: Scottish Folk, Scottish History 1980 (I use the 1993 Polygon paperback edition), p. 37, this was transformed into a "godly" version which began:
The Lord thy God, I am,
That John dois (sic.) thee call,
Johne representit man
Be grace celestiall. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.2
File: ChW2269

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