Hi,

I wrote part of my Love is Teasing headnotes just now. I'm sharing the rough draft here since it's short:

Although "Love Is Teasing" also titled "Love Is Pleasing[1]" has its own Roud number, 1049, the song will be inexorably linked to "Waly, Waly" because the "Love is Teasing" identifying stanza appears, although amended, as a central stanza in Waly, Waly. Other stanzas from "Waly Waly, are also held in common, linking the songs to an ancestry much different than the Died for Love Songs.

The role of "Died for Love" is usually secondary and stanzas found in "Love Is Teasing" are usually floaters or filler stanzas of which all three songs and their relative songs occasionally share. Conversely stanzas from Waly, Waly are rarely found in Died For Love since Died for Love is influenced by different early broadsides: Nelly's Constancy and the similar The Jealous Lover (or, The Damosel's Complaint) with borrowing from the parallel broadside, "Constant Lady and the False-Hearted Squire." "Died for Love" is also related to or part of the "Alehouse" stanzas, the suicide (Rambling Boy/Cruel Father) stanzas, The Foolish Girl stanzas, the "I Wish, I Wish" stanzas and the Died for Love ending (Dig my grave both wide. . .). Of these diverse elements, only the "I Wish, I Wish" stanzas seem to have kept a tie with Love is Teasing and the relationship is distant in most cases.

Perhaps this relationship with "I Wish" is caused by the stanza found in Arthur's Seat, a broadside with stanza in common with Waly, Waly:

Oh, oh! if my young Babe were born,
and set upon the Nurses Knee,
And I my self were dead and gone,
for a Maid again I'le never be.

Arthur's seat also has the "Should I be bound that may go free?/should I Love them that Loves not me?" found in other songs in the extended "Died for Love" family. The close relationship between "The Unfortunate Swain/Picking Lilies" broadsides and "Must I Go Bound," "Deep in Love" as well as sharing with "Waly, Waly" creates a complex relationship that can only be understood specific song texts.

In "Love is Teasin' " by Lucy Stewart of Aberdeenshire, from the family of Fetterangus Stewarts, the Love is Teasing stanzas at the beginning seem to simply replace the "Died for Love" stanzas about the alehouse, infidelity and money, as if they were interchangeable-- the last three stanzas are kept. It's easy to conceptualize how this could occur since both songs are about the lost of love and abandonment.

Comments?

Richie