A Red, Red Rose
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"A Red, Red Rose" is a
1794 Events January–March * January 1 – The Stibo Group is founded by Niels Lund as a printing company in Aarhus (Denmark). * January 13 – The U.S. Congress enacts a law providing for, effective May 1, 1795, a United St ...
song in Scots by
Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the List of national poets, national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the be ...
based on traditional sources. The song is also referred to by the title "(Oh) My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" and is often published as a poem. Many composers have set Burns' lyric to music, but it gained worldwide popularity set to the traditional tune "Low Down in the Broom"


Text

1. My like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June: O my luve's like the melodie That's sweetly play'd in tune. 2. As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I: And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a'the seas gang dry. 3. Till a'the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun: I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run. 4. And fare thee , my only luve, And fare thee weel a while! And I will come again, my luve, Tho' it were ten thousand mile.


Background

In the final years of his short life, Burns worked extensively on traditional Scottish songs, ensuring the preservation of over 300 songs, including "
Auld Lang Syne "Auld Lang Syne" () is a Scottish song. In the English-speaking world, it is traditionally sung to bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight on Hogmanay/New Year's Eve. It is also often heard at funerals, graduations, and as a far ...
". He collaborated with James Johnson on a folk music collection called the '' Scots Musical Museum'' (published in six volumes between 1787-1803). Burns also contributed to George Thomson's five-volume '' A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice'' (1793–1841). Burns intended "A Red, Red Rose" to be published in Thomson's collection. In 1794, he wrote to
Alexander Cunningham Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham (23 January 1814 – 28 November 1893) was a British Army engineer with the Bengal Sappers who later took an interest in the history and archaeology of India. In 1861, he was appointed to the newly crea ...
that he and Thomson disagreed on the song's merits, "What to me appears to be the simple and the wild, to him, and I suspect to you likewise, will be looked on as the ludicrous and the absurd."Lindsay, Maurice.
The Burns Encyclopedia
', "Pietro Urbani". New York: St. Martin's Press. 1980.
At the time, Thomson's publishing project was rivaled by the Italian musician Pietro Urbani who called his anthology ''A Selection of Scots Songs''. Burns and Urbani spent three days together in 1793, collaborating on various songs. Burns recalls, "I likewise gave (Urbani) a simple old Scots song which I had pickt up in this country, which he had promised to set in a suitable manner. I would not even have given him this, had there been any of Mr Thomson's airs, ''suitable to it'', unoccupied." Urbani began to boast of a partnership with Burns on the ''Scots Songs'' anthology. Burns called this a "damned falsehood", and ended their friendship. Nevertheless, Urbani was the first to press with "A Red, Red Rose" in 1794, publishing it in the second book of his anthology. In his book, Urbani coyly refers to Burns without naming him, "the words of the RED, RED ROSE were obligingly given to him by a celebrated Scots poet, who was so struck by 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."


Sources

Burns is best understood as a compiler or a redactor of "A Red, Red Rose" rather than its author. F.B. Snyder wrote that Burns could take "childish, inept" sources and turn them into magic, "The electric magnet is not more unerring in selecting iron from a pile of trash than was Burns in culling the inevitable phrase or haunting cadence from the thousands of mediocre possibilities." One source that is often cited for the song is a Lieutenant Hinches' farewell to his sweetheart, which Ernest Rhys asserts is the source for the central metaphor and some of its best lines. Hinches' poem, "O fare thee well, my dearest dear", bears a striking similarity to Burns's verse, notably the lines which refer to "ten thousand miles" and "Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear". A ballad originating from the same period entitled " The Turtle Dove" also contains similar lines, such as "Though I go ten thousand mile, my dear" and "Oh, the stars will never fall down from the sky/Nor the rocks never melt with the sun". Of particular note is a collection of verse dating from around 1770, ''The Horn Fair Garland'', which Burns inscribed, "Robine Burns aught this buik and no other". A poem in this collection, "The loyal Lover's faithful promise to his Sweet-heart on his going on a long journey" also contains similar verses such as "Althou' I go a thousand miles" and "The day shall turn to night, dear love/And the rocks melt in the sun". An even earlier source is the broadside ballad "The Wanton Wife of Castle-Gate: Or, The Boat-mans Delight", which dates to the 1690s. Midway through the ballad, Burns' first stanza can be found almost verbatim: "Her Cheeks are like the Roses, that blossoms fresh in June; O shes like some new-strung Instrument thats newly put in tune." The provenance for such a song is likely medieval.


Music


Urbani

Pietro Urbani was the first composer to score Burns' poem in 1794. Like most of the pieces in ''Scots Songs'', it is orchestrated for a small chamber ensemble of 2
violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
s,
viola The viola ( , () ) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the ...
, and harpsichord. Unlike most other settings of the poem, Urbani puts it in , which creates certain metrical problems that results in missplaced stresses. At one point, Urbani even has to add a word to fit his chosen meter. Though his is the original setting of "Red, Red Rose", it is little known and rarely performed.


Gow

Burns specified the melody that he had in mind for "Red, Red Rose" in a letter to James Johnson, "The tune of this song is in Niel Gow's first Collection & is called there 'Major Graham' – it is to be found page 6th of that Collection."Davidson Cook
" The Red, red rose' and its tunes"
''Burns Chronicle, 9'' (1934): 63–67.
Niel Gow's ''A collection of Strathspey Reels'' appeared in 1784. He later published two more collections. "Major Graham" is so similar to an earlier song called "Miss Admiral Gordon's Strathspey" that one writer referred to Gow's tune as a "palpable plagiarism". Johnson dutifully set "A Red, Red Rose" to Gow's "Major Gordon" as per Burns' instructions and published it as song number 402 in the fifth volume of '' Scots Musical Museum'' in 1797. This tune bears striking similarities to the eventual melody which would make the song famous, and "Major Gordon" is often mislabeled as the source. Johnson also included an "Old Set" version of "Red, Red Rose" as song number 403. It has been suggested that it is the "Old Set" version which contains the actual melody Burns heard sung in the country. Johnson's setting of "A Red, Red Rose" has been recorded by Jean Redpath.


Marshall

George Thomson finally did get around to publishing "A Red, Red Rose" as song number 89 in the fourth volume of his ''Original Scottish Airs'', which appeared in 1799. Thomson attributes the melody to William Marshall, calling it "Whishaw's Favorite". Marshall's tune is actually called "Mrs. Hamilton of Wishaw's Strathspey", and it was published in the composer's ''Early Scottish Melodies''. Thomson's choice yielded similarly clumsy results as Urbani's, requiring alterations and additions to Burns' text to fit Marshall's melody.


Traditional

The version of "A Red, Red Rose" that is popularly known all over the world uses the tune of a traditional song called "Low Down in the Broom". The melody was widely anthologized, and Burns was familiar with it. In fact, he wrote to George Thomson in 1793, "Low down in the broom—In my opinion, deserves more properly a place among your lively and humorous Songs." Burns' lyric was not paired with "Low Down in the Broom" until Robert Archibald Smith published the third volume of his ''Scotish Minstrel'' in 1821. Prior to this pairing, "A Red, Red Rose" was not widely published as sheet music. "Low Down in the Broom" has several similarities to "Major Graham", which has given rise to the mistaken attribution to Gow as the composer of the song. Both begin with the same melodic contour, but Gow's tune is much more syncopated and harder to sing. "Major Graham" gives stress to the wrong syllables in Burns' text so much that the entire focus of the song shifts to the narrator away from his love.


Other settings

Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; ; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic music, Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber ...
set Burns' poem in German as "Dem roten Röslein gleicht mein Lieb" for piano and voice in 1887. It is the second song in his ''Fünf Lieder und Gesänge'', Op. 27. Burns was a frequent source for Schumann's vocal compositions.
Amy Beach Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (September 5, 1867December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra ...
created a version for piano and voice in 1889, "My luve is like a red, red rose". It is Op. 12, no. 3 of her work.
Jimmy Van Heusen James Van Heusen (born Edward Chester Babcock; January 26, 1913 – February 6, 1990) was an American composer. He wrote songs for films, television, and theater, and won an Emmy and four Academy Award for Best Original Song, Academy Awards for ...
composed a version of "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose".
Pat Boone Patrick Charles Eugene Boone (born June 1, 1934) is an American singer, songwriter, actor, author, television personality, radio host and philanthropist. He sold nearly 50 million records, had 38 Top 40 hits, and has acted in many films. Boone ...
sings Van Heusen's work in the 1959 film adaptation of ''
Journey to the Center of the Earth ''Journey to the Center of the Earth'' (), also translated with the variant titles ''A Journey to the Centre of the Earth'' and ''A Journey into the Interior of the Earth'', is a classic science fiction novel written by French novelist Jules Ve ...
''.
Carly Simon Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1943) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records; her 13 Billboard Hot 100, top 40 U.S. hits include "Anticipation (song), Anticipatio ...
sings a setting of "A Red, Red Rose" composed by her sister Lucy Simon on the 1969 album '' The Simon Sisters Sing the Lobster Quadrille and Other Songs for Children''.
Camera Obscura A camera obscura (; ) is the natural phenomenon in which the rays of light passing through a aperture, small hole into a dark space form an image where they strike a surface, resulting in an inverted (upside down) and reversed (left to right) ...
wrote their own version of the song and included it as a B-side for their 2005 single "I Love My Jean". Burns' lyrics are included in the song "Final Breath" by the
post rock Post-rock is a subgenre of experimental rock that emphasizes texture, atmosphere, and non-traditional song structures over conventional rock techniques. Post-rock artists often combine rock instrumentation and rock stylings with electronics a ...
band
Pelican Pelicans (genus ''Pelecanus'') are a genus of large water birds that make up the family Pelecanidae. They are characterized by a long beak and a large throat pouch used for catching prey and draining water from the scooped-up contents before ...
on their album '' What We All Come to Need''. The Mediæval Bæbes have recorded their version under the title "Till A' the Seas Gang Dry" on their 2008 album ''Illumination''.


Legacy

A Swedish version of the poem, " (du är som en ros)", was made famous by Evert Taube in his 1943 book ''Ballads in Bohuslän''. A free Chinese translation was made by Su Manshu. In an ad campaign for
HMV HMV is an international music and entertainment retailer, founded in 1921. The brand is owned by Hilco Capital and operated by Sunrise Records, except in Japan, where it is owned and operated by Lawson. The inaugural shop was opened on Lo ...
,
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...
said "A Red, Red Rose" was an inspiration for his creative life.Michaels, Sean
"Bob Dylan: Robert Burns is my biggest inspiration"
''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
''. 6 October 2008.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Red Red Rose, A Songs about flowers 18th-century songs Scots-language works Poetry by Robert Burns Traditional ballads Songs with lyrics by Robert Burns 1794 in Scotland Scottish songs Songs based on poems