Cecil Sharp's Note 55 (1916)

No. 55. The True Lover’s Farewell

For other versions with tunes of this ballad and of “The Turtle Dove,” with which it is closely allied, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume ii, p. 55; volume iii, p. 86; volume iv, p. 286).

The song is clearly one of several peasant songs of the same type upon which Burns modelled his “A red, red rose” (see note to the song in The Centenary Burns by Henley and Henderson). The old Scottish tune is printed in Johnson’s Museum under the heading “Queen Mary’s Lament.” The variants of this very beautiful song that have been recently recovered in the southern counties of England prove beyond doubt that this was the source from which Burns borrowed nearly all his lines. Henderson, indeed, states that a broadside containing one of the versions of this song was known to have been in Burns’s possession. Two of the traditional stanzas are included in an American burlesque song, dating from about the middle of the last century, called “My Mary Anne” (see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, volume iii, p. 89; volume iv, p. 288). Three stanzas in the text are similar to corresponding lines in a garland entitled “The true Lover’s Farewell,” the second of “Five excellent New Songs, printed in the year 1792.” The words have been compiled from several traditional sets that I have collected.

The tune is in the Dorian mode.