Annotation:My Love is Like the Red Red Rose (1)

Back to My Love is Like the Red Red Rose (1)

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MY LOVE IS LIKE THE/A RED, RED ROSE [1]. AKA and see "Low Down in the Broom." Scottish, Strathspey. D Major (Cole, Kerr). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The title comes from the lyric set to the tune by the Scots' national poet, Robert Burns. The tune is not the one Burns originally had in mind for his words, which actually was Gow's "Major Graham of Inchbrakie"; it was replaced with an old Scottish tune "Low Down in the Broom" by G.R. Graham some fifty years after Burns' original publication. Neil (1991) records that most of the lyric came from a country girl whom the poet overheard singing in his youth; so impressed was he that he took a note of them and later altered them to his ear. Other variants of the song also exist.

My love is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
My love is like the melodie,
That's sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I,
And i will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Cole (1000 Fiddle Tunes), 1940; p. 125. Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 1), c. 1875; p. 25. Ryan's Mammoth Collection, 1883; p. 165.

Recorded sources:

See also listing at:
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [1]

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