Volume V, song 425 and 426, page 438 - 'The Boatie rows' -...
Volume V, song 425 and 426, page 438 - 'The Boatie rows' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)
'O weel may the boatie row, And better may she speed; O leesome may the boatie row, That wins the bairns bread. The boatie rows, The boatie rows, the boatie rows indeed And happy be the lot o' a' wha wishes her to speed.'
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.
This is the first set and the first part of the second set of three provided in the 'Museum'. In each, the song is sung to a different tune (see also song 427). John Glen, in 'Early Scottish Melodies' (1900), describes the melody of the first as a 'mongrel air'. He believes that 'its first four bars are taken from 'The Keel row', and the remainder made up from 'There's nae luck about the house' (song 44)'. As to the second version, he suggested that the tune was actually 'an original melody which never took the popular fancy'. The second set is continued on the same page as the third set (song 427).
Volume V, song 425 and 426, page 438 - 'The Boatie rows' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)