My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose

DESCRIPTION: "My love is like a red, red rose that's newly sprung in June, My love is like a melody that's sweetly sprung in June." The singer promises to love "Till all the seas gang dry" and return to his love though his voyage takes him "ten thousand mile"
AUTHOR: Robert Burns
EARLIEST DATE: 1794 (Urbani's _Scots Songs_, according to Lindsay)
KEYWORDS: love nonballad separation return beauty
FOUND IN: Britain
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Jolly-Miller-Songster-5thEd, #105, "My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 140, "My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose" (1 text)
DT, REDREDRO*
ADDITIONAL: James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #453, p. 582, "A red red rose" (1 text, 1 tune, from 1794)
Roud #12946
RECORDINGS:
Mrs. McGrath, "My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose" (on Lomax43, LomaxCD1743)
SAME TUNE:
I Have No Pain, Dear Mother, Now (File: BrPa043B)
NOTES [227 words]: The irony of this song, of course, is that Burns himself was about as constant as -- well, we won't go into that....
I don't know if this song ever did much in tradition, but it's certainly one of the more often-printed of Burns's poems (printed, e.g., as item CXC in Palgrave's Golden Treasury).
It took some time for the song to settle on a tune. According to Maurice Lindsay, The Burns Encyclopedia, 1959, 1970; third edition, revised and enlarged, St. Martin's Press, 1980, p. 367, Urbani, who first published it, had his own tune, reporting, "the words of the RED, RED ROSE were obligingly given to him by a celebrated Scots Poet, who was so struck with them when sung by a country girl that he wrote them down, and, not being pleased with the air, begged the Author to set them to Music in the style of a Scots Tune, which he has done accordingly." It doesn't sound as if this was really Burns's idea, though; when Burns gave it to the Scots Musical Museum, he used Gow's "Major Graham" as the melody. Thomson then published it in 1799 in Original Scottish Airs, rewritten to fit a tune by Marshall called "Wishaw's Favorite," which forced Thomson to add syllables. Finally one Robert Archibald Smith published it with the tune "Low down in the Broom," which came from the Caledonian Pocket Companion. This tune finally made the song popular. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: FSWB140C

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