Volume IV, song 308, page 318 - 'A Southland Jenny' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)

Verse 1: 'A Southland Jenny that was right bonie, She had for a suitor a Norland Johnie But he was sicken a bashfull wooer That he could scarcely speak unto her.' 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. The subject of this song is really the divide between Scotland and England. Norland Johnie realises that he would rather have a wife from the north who was good at 'milkin and threshin', whereas the southern girls are only interested in clothes, they are 'a' for dressin'. It has been claimed that Burns wrote these lyrics but Glen (1900), an authority on the 'Museum', refutes this with the cutting lines, 'it is a very insipid production, and probably first saw light a long way south of the Scottish Border'.

Collection

Scots Musical Museum

Inventory Number

4503504

Title

Volume IV, song 308, page 318 - 'A Southland Jenny' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)

Object Type

PhysicalObject

Measurements

- 132 x 211 mm