The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #174511 Message #4231770
Posted By: Mick Pearce (MCP)
19-Nov-25 - 03:25 PM
Thread Name: Silver Tassie original melody
Subject: RE: Silver Tassie original melody
Do you mean literally sheet music Jim, or printed sources generally. Dick in his The Songs of Robert Burns, 1903 prints The Secret Kiss as the melody (quoting SMM as his source).
The notes in that book also have a list of tunes that were considered for it:
"The tune, by James Oswald, is in Universal Harmony, 1745, 108, entitled The stolen Kiss; in the Caledonian Pocket Companion, 1752, iv. 23, The secret Kiss. Burns was not quite satisfied with his choice of a melody, for in September, i793, he suggested to George Thomson that as it precisely suited the measure of the air, Waes my heart that we should sunder, he might set it to this. Thomson did not act on the advice, but printed it to The old highland laddie, which subsequent compilers have adopted. Burns's alternative melody, Waes my heart that we should sunder, is a characteristic tune printed in Original Scotch Tunes, 1700 also in the Orpheus Caledonius, 1725, No. 9."