Annotation:Red Red Rose (2)

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RED, RED ROSE [2]. AKA and see "Low Down in the Broom." Scottish, Air and Strathspey. D Major (Kerr): C Major (Howe). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Howe): AABB (Kerr). The title comes from Robert Burns' song "My Love is Like a Red Red Rose" which was originally written to fiddler-composer William Marshall’s “Mrs. Hamilton of Wishaw” (which appears as "Major Graham of Inchbrakie" in Gow's First Collection, 2nd ed.). Later G.F. Graham replaced Marshall's melody and set Burns’s words to the old Scots air "Low Down in the Broom."

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

The song appears in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (No. 402). In 1881 “Red, Red Rose” became the march past of the British army’s Loyal North Lancashire Regiment (whose 1st and 2nd Battalions were made up of an amalgamation of the 47th West Lancashire Regiment and the 81st Loyal Lincoln Volunteers), apparently to match their emblem, the Red Rose of Lancashire (the origins of which were in the Wars of the Roses). The Loyals amalgamated again in 1970with the Lancashire Regiment to become the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, keeping “Red, Red Rose” as their regimental march (David Murray, Music of the Scottish Regiments, Edinburgh, 1994; pg. 209). Also, prior to 1881, the 73rd Perthshire Regiment also played the tune as their march, although when they became the 2nd Battalion of The Black Watch, they switched to “Highland Laddie,” to match the 1st battalion.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Howe (1000 Jigs and Reels), c. 1867; p. 127. Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 3), c. 1880’s; No. 27, p. 6.

Recorded sources:

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