Low Down in the Broom
Traditional
- Original music written by
- [Traditional], Pietro Urbani
- Original lyrics written by
- [Traditional], [Traditional]
- Publication date
- 1821
- Language
- English
- Adapted from
-
Low Down in the Broom written by [Traditional]
The Red Red Rose written by Robert Burns, [Traditional], Pietro Urbani
- Comments
- Following the publication of The Red Red Rose in 1794 to Pietro Urbani's melody, the traditional words that Burns had poeticised were re-set to various other tunes in new publications. For example, in James Johnson’s "The Scots Musical Museum", published shortly after Burns’s death in 1796, the lyric was set to a melody by the Scottish fiddler Niel Gow, entitled Major Graham’s Strathspey, which had appeared in Gow’s 1784 "A Collection of Strathspeys and Reels". Johnson added a second version of the song entitled Old Set, Red, Red Rose, of which the old set referred to a tune called Mary Queen of Scots. In 1799, George Thomson included the song in his publication "A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs", this time to the air Wishaw’s Favourite, which was composed by the north-east English fiddler William Marshall. Ultimately though, another Eighteenth Century tune, Low Down in the Broom, became the standard accompaniment we know today after the words and tune were matched in Volume 2 of Robert Archibald Smith's "The Scottish Minstrel - A Selection from the Vocal Melodies of Scotland" published in 1821.
- Licensing
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