A Red, Red Rose

“A Red, Red Rose” is a 1794 song in Scots by Robert Burns 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”. ‘My Love’s Like a Red, Red Rose’ is one of the most widely anthologised love poems in English, but Robert Burns may have been writing down (and adapting) an existing folk song by that prolific author, ‘Anon’. In his later life, Burns worked extensively on traditional Scottish songs, ensuring the preservation of over 300 songs, including “Auld Lang Syne“. 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 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.”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”, 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.”