Volume IV, song 373, page 386 - 'The Posie' - Scanned from...
Volume IV, song 373, page 386 - 'The Posie' - 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 luve will venture in where it daur na weel be seen, O luve will venture in where wisdom ance has been but I will down yon river rove, amang the wood sae green, And a' to pu' a Posie to my ain dear May.' 'Daur na' means dare not, 'ance' means once, 'yon' means 'yonder' and 'amang' means 'among'.
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.
Though Burns certainly wrote the lyrics for this love song, John Glen (1900) comments that there is some argument regarding the origins of the song's melody, and states that there is no evidence to suggest that it is an old song. Burns himself claimed that the lyrics came come from a doggerel ballad that his wife used to sing to him, while 'the air was taken from Mrs Burns's voice'. Often sung at weddings, the song itself brings together a posy of lexical flowers as symbols of the qualities that he admires in his loved one.
Volume IV, song 373, page 386 - 'The Posie' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)