Annotation:I Love My Love in Secret
X:1 T:I love my Love in seacreit [sic] M:C| L:1/8 R:Scottish Measure B:Henry Playford - A Collection of Original Scotch-Tunes, (Full of the B:Highland Humours) for the violin (London, 1700, No. 3, p. 2) N:"Most of them being in the Compass of the Flute." Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:C V:1 clef=treble name="0." [V:1] (fe)|e2 (dc) c3G|A2d2d2 ag|e2 (dc) g3c|egag e3c| egag efge|fedc d3c|(eg)(fc) (fe)d>c|A2c2c2:| |:ag|e3 (dc) g2G2|A2d2d2 ag|e2 (dc) g2c2|a2c2g2c2| fgag efge|fedc d3c|(eg)(ac) (fe)d>c|A2c2c2:| |:ag|egcg ecgG|A2d2d2 ag|egcg ecgc|acgc ecge| f/e/f/g/ ag efge|fedc defg|aegd ecgG|A2c2c2:|]
I LOVE MY LOVE IN SEACREIT (Secret). Scottish, Scotch Measure (cut time). A Mixolydian: C Major (Hume, Oswald, Playford): B Flat Major (McGibbon). Standard or AEac# tuning (fiddle). ABCDE. "I Love My Love in Secret" appears in the Guthrie's MS'. (according to Dauney), the Margaret Sinkler MS. (Glasgow, 1710), Henry Playford's 1700 collection of Scottish dance music (Collection Original Scotch Tunes, p. 2), and the Hume MS. (1704). Later in the 18th century it was published in James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion (1760, vol. 2, pp. 26-27), and in McGibbon's Scots Tunes (1762) in air minuet form set in scoratura (AEac#) tuning. It also appears in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, vol. 6 (1790, p. 213). The air represents the oldest form of the better-known tune "Logie of Buchan (1)."
They lyric printed in the Musical Museum" begins:
My Sandy gied to me a ring
Was a' beset wi' diamonds fine;
But I gied him a far better thing,
I gied my heart in pledge o' his ring.
It was the custom in Scotland for lovers to break a silver coin prior to a necessary separation, each keeping a piece as a pledge to be faithful during absence. "I love my love in secret" was contained in the Northumbrian music manuscript collection of John Smith, dated 1752, unfortunately now lost. The contents were copied by 19th century folk-music collector John Stokoe in 1887, when the manuscript was in the possession of Lewis Proudlock. Stokoe's volume Northumbrian Minstrelsy had been printed five year prior, and his interest in Smith’s ms. demonstrates Stokoe's continuing commitment to older Northumbrian music. The tune was also entered into the large 1840 music manuscript collection of multi-instrumentalist John Rook, of Waverton, near Wigton, Cumbria, as "I love my lass in secret".
