Come Over the Burn, Bessie

DESCRIPTION: Early modern English or late Middle English: "Come over the burne, Besse, Thou lytyll prety Besse, Come over the the burne, (Besse), to me." "Come over the burn, Bess(ie), Thou little pretty Bessie, Come over the burne, Bessie, to me."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1530 (Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic II)
KEYWORDS: love courting MiddleEnglish river
FOUND IN: Britain
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, p. 505 footnote a, "(no title)" (1 short text with discussion)
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic II, pp. 121-122 "Come O'er the Bourne, Bessy" (1 tune plus 2 texts based on it)
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #5227
ADDITIONAL: Siegfried Wenzel, _Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric_, Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 241, "(no title)" (1 fragment)
MANUSCRIPT: Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole 176 (SC 6659), folio 100
MANUSCRIPT: Cambridge UK, Emmanuel College 263, folios i-ii
MANUSCRIPT: Cambridge, Trinity College O.2.53 (1157), folios 55-56
MANUSCRIPT: London, British Library Additional MS 5665, folio 143
COMPARE:
ADDITIONAL: Vivian de Sola Pinto and Allan Edwin Rodway, _The Common Muse: An Anthology of Popular British Poetry XVth-XXth Century_, Chatton & WIndus, 1957, pp. 37-39, "A songe between the Quenes majestie and Englande" (1 text, William Birche's poem with this chorus)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
Come Over the Burne, Besse
Cum Ouer the Borne Bessey
Come O'er the Bourn, Bessy, to Me
NOTES [778 words]: This is truly a conundrum. The lyrics quoted in the description are never found in isolation. They are part of a piece the DIMEV titles "The burn is this world blind," described as "Christ's appeal from the cross." This poem is in six-line tail rhyme, which I am quite certain was not traditional. This fragment was the burden of it.
And yet the burden exists beyond the appeal from the cross. Wenzel, p. 242, says it was "extremely popular in Tudor England" and claims there are three manuscript copies of the music (without really citing them). Wenzel says Skelton's "Speke, Parrot" alludes to it; I believe he is referring to lines 235-240:
My propire Besse,
My praty Besse,
Turne ones agayne to me:
For slepyste thou, Besse,
Or wakeste thow, Besse,
Myne herte hyt ys with the.
Wenzel further claims it is quoted in William Wager's play "A Very Mery and Pythic Commedie, called The Longer Thou Livest, The More Foole Thou Art," from 1569. The DIMEV also cites variations and adaptions: "Cf. [#]5066; For a secular version see #3644; for late sixteenth-century political adaptations see Rollins (1924), 56, 205, Nos. 587, 2377" (a reference to various items listed in the Stationer's Register that appear to be ballads; according to Furness, p. 207, one of these ballads was registered in 1564).
And then there is a line attributed to Shakespeare:
Come o'er the [bourn], Bessy, to me.
This is spoken by Edgar while talking with the Fool in "King Lear"; it is line III.vi.25 on p. 1278 of ShakespeareEvans. There is, however, much doubt about the reading. None of our sources actually read "bourn" (or "burn," or "bourne"). The First Folio, in fact, omits all of scene vi from line 16 to line 56, including the reference to this song (for the text, or its absence, see the "Tragedies" section of the Folio, p. 299).
The First Quarto of "King Lear," the oldest surviving text of the play, is the source for the line, which ShakespeareEvans numbers as III.vi.25, but it doesn't actually read "Come o'er the bourn." What it has is "Come o'er the broome." It was Capell who suggested the reading "bourn," according to ShakespeareEvans, p. 1301. According to Furness, p. 207, Capell based the reading on the text of this song in Wager's play.
So what did Shakespeare write? Different editions of Shakespeare have different texts here; the Signet agrees with ShakespeareEvans in using Capell's emendation "bourne"; the Yale reads "broom" following the quarto; the New Pelican prints Quarto and Folio texts in parallel as separate versions and has this in the Quarto version as line 22 (ShakespeareOrgel, p. 1536). In the notes, ShakespeareOrgel give a strong argument for the reading "burn": the Fool's obscene reply to Edgar is "Her boat hath a leak, And she must not speak, Why she dares not come over to thee." In other words, it appears the Fool interprets "burn" not as a stream but as the burning pain of a venereal disease. This is not absolutely compelling, but it makes sense; if the reading "broome" were adopted, the Fool would not be replying to Edgar in a meaningful way, so the reading "burn" is much more effective.
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, p. 505 has a different explanation for the origin of the lines, claiming "The allusion is to an English ballad by William Birch, entitled 'A Songe betwene the Quenes Majestie and Englande,'" in which England calls out to Queen Elizabeth with this verse. Birch, however, was quoting and imitating the verse, not originating it (Furness, p. 208).
Malone apparently claimed that Bessy was the partner of Poor Tom of Bedlam, according to Furness, p. 208, but I do not know if Malone had evidence for this.
Of the four manuscripts with the piece, Ashmole is clearly a Tudor manuscript with some other interesting secular pieces, e.g. one about Mary I dancing with her father Henry VIII. Emmanuel College 263 has no other Middle English poetry. Trinity College O.2.53 also has a reference to Henry VIII; it has several poetic pieces, though many are religious and not at all ballad-like. British Library Addit. 5665 is the most interesting of the lot; although the only other Ballad Index piece it contains is "Pray for Us, Thou Prince of Peace," and perhaps "I Have Been a Foster (The Old Forester)," it has a Boar's Head Carol and several other Christmas carols, plus the well-known "Pastime with good company." It is a very interesting set of sources.
Adding it all up, it seems nearly certain that there was some sort of popular song reading either "Come o'er the bourne, Bess(ie)" or "Blink o'er the bourne, Bess(ie)." All we have is this chorus. But I thought I'd better index it to keep track of it.... - RBW
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