Volume III, song 229, page 238 - 'Jamie come try me' -...
Volume III, song 229, page 238 - 'Jamie come try me' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)
Verse 1: 'Jamie come try me, Jamie come try me, If thou would win my love Jamie come try me. If thou should ask my love, Could I deny thee? If thou would win my love Jamie come try 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.
Burns has left a short comment on this poem in his personal notes on the 'Museum', 'The air is Oswald's; the song mine'. The tune was published in Oswald's 'Collection of Curious Scots Tunes, vol II' (1744), and it was in this publication that he put claim to the tune. There is now, no way to verify this. Of the song very little is known. Many of Burns's songs were inspired by real people and their situations, but there is no further information given on this song.
Volume III, song 229, page 238 - 'Jamie come try me' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)