Volume IV, song 391, pages 404 and 405 - 'I love my Jovial...
Volume IV, song 391, pages 404 and 405 - 'I love my Jovial Sailor' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)
Verse 1: 'I love my jovial sailor of him I'll make my eqal Before the proudest Baron o' noblest degree. And because that he was poor they could not him endure But I love him mair and mair he's a dear boy to me.'
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.
According to Glen, in 'Early Scottish Melodies' (1900), 'The pretty tune that is wedded to this song has much in common with the air of 'The Auld Man's Mare's Dead'.' Further to this, Glen also noted that part of the melody, most specially 'the closing bars of the first strain and the whole of the second', is distinctively Irish. Neither the song nor melody is known to have appeared in print prior to the 'Museum'.
Volume IV, song 391, pages 404 and 405 - 'I love my Jovial Sailor' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)