This song has been dear to me ever since I first heard it in Blairgowrie from Belle, Cathy or Sheila Stewart in 1967. Personally, it reminds me of a time spent in Glenisla Youth Hostel and beginning to learn to ski at Glenisla when I nearly kissed the first girl with whom it might have meant something.
Songs accrue memories and with them meanings. As songs move or as time passes, they tend to lose meaning and are changed so that it is re-established, sometimes they are changed deliberately. Their meaning alters with time, place and experience.
Sometimes it's interesting to try to unpack the layers. I'm not going to do it (so I'm left with my romantic feelings that I have no wish to change) but the earliest reports, Greig, Ord, and the recordings of Charlotte Higgins, Jeannie Robertson and Belle Stewart, could be ordered. I'd be a bit surprised if they contained the contradictions pointed above. I expect the line will be "They hae pairted mony a true love but they'll ne'er pairt us twa" - and the verse Maureen Jelks sings about the lav'rock, won't be there at all. The fun starts when we try to explain why!