Glen Collection of printed music > Printed music > Songs of Robert Burns

III. LOVE-SONGS: HUMOROUS 417
Holiday as the title of a ballad or dance tune. In England, two different
melodies served for numerous ballads of the Peg-a-Ramsay class, but neither is
identical with that of Burns's verses. The earliest specimen of the English
melody is in Ballet's Lute Book, a MS. of uncertain date, the other is in a MS.
by Dr. John Bull, entitled Little Pegge of Raiitsie, known later as Watton
Towii's End, or O, London is a fine i07un, in the Dancing Master, 1665, and
with the song- in Pills, 1719, y. ijg. The music is reprinted in Chappell's
Popular Musie, p. 218. The Scottish tune in the Musetim, 1803, with Burns's
sons: is entirely different from the English Air. I have not found it in any
earlier music book.
No. 195. The taylor he cam here to sew. Scots Musical Museum, 1796)
No. 4^0. The MS. is in the British Museum. A song in Herd's Scots So?tgs,
1769, jiS, entitled Tke tailor gave only a bare suggestion to Burns, neither the
subject nor the rhythm being identical with that in the text. In the MS.
he informs the editor that the tune Th^ Drummer is in Aird's Airs, 1783,
i. No. 7.29, and goes on to instruct him as follows : ' Only remember that the
second part of the tune, as Aird has set it, goes here to the first part of the
song; and of course Aird's first part goes to the chorus' (R. B.). The in-
struction was carried out with a little variation from the melody in Aird, which
is as in our text. The music is also in Stewart's Reels, 1762, 28, and Ross's,
Reels, 17S0, j2. It is said to be also in Walsh's Caledonian Country Dances,
c. 1 741.
TSo. 196. O, steer her up, and baud her gaun. Scots Musical Museum,
1803, No.jo.^. 'Written for this work by Robert Burns.' 'Mr. Burns's old
words' (Law's MS. List). In Ramsay's Miscellany, 1725, is a garbled and
disconnected song of the title, which Herd copied into Scots Songs, 1 769, iSi.
Stenhouse says ' Ramsay very properly suppressed the old song, enough of
which is still well known ' {Illustrations, p. 441). Bums wrote all but the first
four lines, and put it wholly in Scottish orthography.
The tune Steer her up, a seventeenth century production, is said to be
in Guthrie'' s MS. It is in Playford's Original Scots Tunes, 1700; Sinklers
MS., 1710; M'^Gibbon's Scots Tunes, 1742, 7; Oswald's Co?npanion, 1745, ii.
2j ; and Aird's Airs. 1782, i. No. 118. The first half oi Steer her up is in the
tune Scerdustis in the Skene MS.., c. 1630.
Ifo. 197. What can a young lassie? Scots Musical Museum, 1792,
No. ^/(5, signed ' R,' entitled What can a young lassie do wi' an auld man'i
The MS. is in the British Museum. In Gray's MS. List — 'Mr. B. — words.'
A variation of the subject of the song is four lines in the Herd MS., as follows,
now printed for the first time : —
' Kiss ye Jean, kiss ye Jean ; —
Never let an auld man kiss ye Jean,
An auld man 's nae man till a young quean ;—
Never let an auld man kiss ye Jean.'
Holbein made a wood-cut of this very old episode in human life for Erasmus's
Praise of Folly. There is an English ballad on the subject about two hundred
and fifty years old. The earliest copy is a black letter broadside of the
seventeenth century, entitled ' 71ie young woman s complaint, or a caveat to all
maids to have a care how they be married to old men. The tune is What
should a yottng woman do with an old man, &^c., or The Tyrant. London,
printed for W. Gilbertson in Giltspur Street Without Nevgate.' It is referred
to in a medley in Durfey's Pills, 1719. This street ballad is better than the
average of the rhyming literature of the flying stationers. I cannot identify
the English melody or its alternative The Tyrant, but it is not at all likely
to be the tune in the text, wliich is in Oswald's Companion, 1754, vi. /, and
for which Burns wrote his song.