17 pages • 34 minutes read
Robert BurnsA Red, Red Rose
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1794A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context
Burns wrote in the midst of a ballad revival that took place throughout the 1700s in Great Britain. A ballad is a poem or song that tells a story. Ballads are an integral part of British oral tradition. In the 18th century, there was a movement by various antiquarians, academics, and writers to collect ballads and preserve them in publication. According to Britannica, this movement was “not a revival but a new discovery and appreciation of the merits of popular poetry, formerly ignored or despised by scholars and sophisticated writers” (“ballad revival.” Britannica).
Britannica traces the start of this ballad revival to 1711, while the publication of Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry solidified this trend. Other ballad collections included Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, which was published in 1802 (Britannica). Burns himself entered into this ballad revival when he assisted James Johnson in compiling The Scots Musical Museum, which was a collection of folk songs published in 1797. Burns also worked with George Thomson on a similar project, A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice published in 1793.
Specifically regarding “A Red, Red Rose,” Burns didn’t pen it himself, but rather “collected” it in 1794. Burns initially wanted it to be published in Thomson’s collection, though Thomson did not agree. Burns passed the song along to another published named Pietro Urbani, and it was published in Scots Songs. Burns himself claimed to originally have heard it sung by a country girl and recorded the words. Thanks to Burns and his work collecting Scottish ballads and folk songs, readers centuries later have access to pieces of history such as “A Red, Red Rose,” which would otherwise have been lost to time.
Authorial Context
As relayed in the biography section, Burns was born to a working-class family. His father was a farmer who eventually became bankrupt, and Burns and his brother would later continue working the land and testing their agricultural acumen. However, Burns’s life didn’t end any differently than his father’s, as some speculate Burns died in debt. With a sporadic, informal education, Burns did not have the refined verbiage indicative of the upper class. Rather, he wrote in the vernacular Scottish dialect, what some considered to be the “vulgar” or “common” tongue. As Franklyn Snyder writes, “His language therefore is not local, but represents the general dialect of southern Scotland, even of the east rather than the west” (Snyder, Franklyn B. “A Note on Burns’s Language.” Modern Language Notes, vol. 43, no. 8, 1928, pp. 511-18). Examples of this dialect can be found in “A Red, Red Rose” when Burns writes “gang” (Line 8) rather than “go” and “weel” (Line 13) rather than “well.”
While writing in such a Lowland Scottish dialect was not common at the time Burns wrote, his poetry was very well received. The publication of his poetry collection in 1786 was an “almost immediate success” and was “taken up by the Scottish literati as the work of a ‘Heaven-taught plowman’” (“Robert Burns.” Scottish Poetry Library, 2022). Burns traveled to Edinburgh to “capitalise on this sudden fame, and […] had a most enjoyable time being lionised by the great and the good—he created a striking impression, not just with his poems, but by his good looks, his charm and his ease of conversation in company” (Scottish Poetry Library). By writing in the vernacular, Burns was integral in changing social preconceptions of what could be considered “literature.”
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By Robert Burns
