Genie: Thanks for posting. This is one of my favorite songs, too. It's so cold and pure. Whenever I play it, a picture forms in my mind of snow in a winter field, with little hollows around the stems of plants.

This is a beautiful song for the fretted dulcimer, which I happen to play.

I read somewhere that this was a Marian hymn which goes further back than 1599. It may have been medieval. The words were altered to make it more suitable for Protestants, for whom the Rose changed from Mary to Jesus. Michael Praetorius has been implicated :-) in that.

Whatever the details, it is a beautiful, beautiful melody, full of longing.