"A Red, Red Rose" is a 1794 song in Scots by Robert Burns based on traditional sources. The song is also referred to by the title "(Oh) My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" and is often published as a poem. Many composers have set Burns' lyric to music, but it gained worldwide popularity set to the traditional tune "Low Down in the Broom" Text My luve is like a red red rose That's newly sprung in June; O my Luve's like the melodie That's sweetly play'd in tune; As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry; Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun; And I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only Luve And fare thee weel, a while! And I will come again, my Luve, Tho' it were ten thousand mile. Background In the final years of his short life, Burns worked extensively on traditional Scottish songs, ensuring the preservation of over 300 songs, including "Auld Lang Syne". He collaborated with James Johnson on a folk music collection called the Scots Musical Museum (published in six volumes between 1787-1803). Burns also contributed to George Thomson's five-volume A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice (1793–1841). Burns intended "A Red, Red Rose" to be published in Thomson's collection. In 1794, he wrote to Alexander Cunningham that he and Thomson disagreed on the song's merits, "What to me appears to be the simple and the wild, to him, and I suspect to you likewise, will be looked on as the ludicrous and the absurd." At the time, Thomson's publishing project was rivaled by the Italian musician Pietro Urbani who called his anthology A Selection of Scots Songs. Burns and Urbani spent three days together in 1793, collaborating on various songs. Burns recalls, "I likewise gave (Urbani) a simple old Scots song which I had pickt up in this country, which he had promised to set in a suitable manner. I would not even have given him this, had there been any of Mr Thomson's airs, suitable to it, unoccupied." Urbani began to boast of a partnership with Burns on the Scots Songs anthology. Burns called this a "damned