Volume IV, song 360, page 371 - 'Bess and her Spinning...
Volume IV, song 360, page 371 - 'Bess and her Spinning Wheel' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)
Verse 1: 'O Leeze me on my spinning-wheel, And leeze me on my rock and reel; Frae tap to tae that cleeds me bien, And haps me fiel and warm at e'en! I'll set me down and sing and spin, While laigh descends the simmer sun, Blest wi' content, and milk and meal, O leeze me on my my spinnin' wheel.' 'Leeze' means 'dear to', 'cleeds' means 'clothes' and 'laigh' means 'low'.
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.
Burns wrote this song for the Scots Musical Museum. In his efforts to trace the origins of this melody, Stenhouse (1853) inadvertently sets down a false trail, by attributing the song to Oswald. Glen (1900) says that Stenhouse's mistake is understandable, given that a stray asterisk beside the song title in Oswald's publication identifies the song as his own composition. Glen writes that the asterisk is probably a mistake on the part of the engraver, and continues that the melody is an old Scots measure that had already been printed long before Oswald was born. According to Glen, the song appeared in Henry Playford's book, 'Original Scots Tunes', in 1700, under the song title 'Cosen Cole's Delight'.
Volume IV, song 360, page 371 - 'Bess and her Spinning Wheel' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)