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Description: | Verse 1: 'Waes me that e'er I made your bed! Waes me that e'er I saw ye, For now I've lost my maiden head, And I ken na how they ca' ye! My name's weel kend in my ain countrie, They ca' me the linkin laddie: An ye had na been as willing as I, Shame fa' them wad e'er hae bade ye.'
The 'Scots Musical Museum' is the most important of the numerous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections of Scottish song. When the engraver James Johnson started work on the second volume of his collection in 1787, he enlisted Robert Burns as contributor and editor. Burns enthusiastically collected songs from various sources, often expanding or revising them, whilst including much of his own work. The resulting combination of innovation and antiquarianism gives the work a feel of living tradition.
This is thought to have been a modern production by Burns as there are no previous occurences of it in publication. Although Burns gave the tune to Johnson with no further information, it is now believed to be a reworking of older tunes. There are resemblances to 'Jenny, come down to Jock' (song 167) and another folksong 'Here's to the Maiden of bashful fifteen'. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 | Publisher: | National Library of Scotland | Temporal: | 1787-01-01 - 1803-12-31 | Source: | Burns Scotland | Identifier: | Volume III, song 237, page 246 - 'The li | Go to resource |
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