Robert Burns and the Lasses–Two Love Songs

It’s always a bit of a facer to track down some lovely, idealized idea about a person or artwork and find out the real story. So it’s been with Robert Burns and two of his famous love songs, “O My Luve’s Like a Red, Red Rose” and “I’ll Ay Call In by Yon Town.” Was he a tender, faithful lover who paid the object of his desire these tributes? Does he stand as an example of proper behavior to those reading his poetry? Did he . . . well, I think you get the gist: the answer to these and similar questions is a resounding “no.”

When Burns died at age 37 he’d fathered 13 children (that we know of) by four different women and had love affairs with a number of others. The only woman he married, though, was Jean Armour. Were she alive today she’d probably be labeled as an “enabler;” she even went so far as to bring up Burns’ daughter by another woman who was born the same month as his son with Jean. As she said, “Oor Rab needed twa wives.” Just to sketch out the relationship between Jean and Burns takes up a fair amount of space. He met her in 1785 when Burns was 26. She quickly became pregnant by him, but her father refused to let the couple marry because of Burns’ poor financial prospects. He went off and got involved with someone else while Jean gave birth to twins. The couple reconciled and married after “many bizarre turnings” and yet another set of twins. She seems to have remained faithful, and her last child by Burns was born on the day of his funeral. He was an on-again, off-again presence in her life. I can’t imagine what they talked about when he was home!

In spite of all the foregoing, Burns wrote lovingly about Jean, saying in one of his lesser-known works that:

There’s not a bonie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green,
There’s not a bonie bird that sings,
But minds me o’ my Jean.

 We don’t have specific references to Jean on “Red Red Rose,” so its ideas on love will have to be discussed in general terms. At first the lyrics seem so trite and shallow as not to be worth discussion, but there’s a lot going on in with them. The first stanza references short-lived beautiful things: a newly-blossomed rose “that’s newly sprung in June” and a melody “that’s sweetly sung in tune.” But the next verses quickly move on to more lasting images:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

I’ve always been especially intrigued with the image of rocks “melting” with the sun. Burns wasn’t a churchgoer by any means, but no one escaped biblical imagery in those days, and there was a common belief that God would bring about the end of the world by fire. One passage that Burns may have been referencing is from the New Testament book of II Peter, from the old King James Version of the Bible that would have been in use at the time: “the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” Burns may also have been referring to new ideas about geology that were developing at the time; he was apparently acquainted with the great Scottish geologist James Hutton, who saw the earth as extremely old and subject to the forces of nature that would, indeed, someday bring about the end of all things. The two ideas could have come together in the poet’s mind.

You might expect that the final verse would leave us with the lover kneeling before the woman, pledging to be with her until the world falls apart around them, but that’s not what he does. Ever noticed that? The last verse is a farewell and a promise to love her and return to her even if they’re far apart:

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.

Knowing what we know about Burns’ peripatetic love life, we can safely assume that the addressee is most emphatically not his “only luve.” But maybe he wanted her to be that; maybe he wanted to be faithful. It’s always hard to know someone’s true motives.

“I’ll Ay Call In by Yon Town” does indeed refer to someone named “Jean,” and since we know that Jean Armour’s father forbade the marriage until after Burns had attained some success with his poetry it’s very possible that Burns was describing their secret meetings. Here’s the full text of this very brief poem in its original Scots dialect with a version in modern English:

Here’s a lovely arrangement of “Red Red Rose” by the great Rene Clausen, with a performance by the Concordia College and directed by the arranger:

And here’s the challenging arrangement of “I’ll Ay Call In” by Mack Wilberg that’s pretty much the standard for this song (note the cool piano part):