Volume VI, song 527, page 544 - 'Stern winter has left us' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)

Verse 1: 'Stern winter has left us, the trees are in bloom, And cowslips and vi'lets the meadows perfume; While kids are disporting, and birds fill the spray, I wait for my Jocky to hail the new May.' 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. John Glen (1900) believes that this Spring love song is English in origin. According to William Stenhouse (1853), the air that the song lyrics were adapted to is 'Jockey and Jenny', which appears in volume five of James Oswald's 'Caledonian Pocket Companion' (1760). Glen says that if Stenhouse is correct about this being the original tune for the ballad, then it is an English air. Although the melody in the Museum is said to be Gaelic in origin, Glen writes that there is no printed version of this melody in any collection of Highland music before 1803. However, Glen says that the second tune these lyrics were also sung to - see song number 528 - is the famous Irish air, 'Kitty Tyrell'.

Collection

Scots Musical Museum

Inventory Number

4503721

Title

Volume VI, song 527, page 544 - 'Stern winter has left us' - 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

- 129 x 211 mm