Volume II, song 115, page 118 - 'The Lowlands of Holland' -...
Volume II, song 115, page 118 - 'The Lowlands of Holland' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)
Verse 1: 'The love that I have chosen I'll there with be content, The saut-sea shall be frozen Before that I repent; Repent it shall I never Until the day I die, But the lowlands of Holland Hae twinn'd my love and me.' In this instance 'saut' means salt.
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.
There appears to be much disagreement over the origins of this particular tune. John Glen, in 'Early Scottish Melodies' (1900), went to great lengths to clear up some of the confusion and misinformation surrounding it without coming to any definite conclusions himself. Folk music has always been notoriously difficult to pin down to a particular date, songwriter or composer. As part of the oral tradition, its very nature does not lend itself to careful documentation.
Volume II, song 115, page 118 - 'The Lowlands of Holland' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)