Journal 11 - A Red, Red Rose

                In the poem, “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns, Burns does a wonderful job expressing the language, environment, and accent of his Country. By changing vowels in certain words, we know, as readers, to change the way we would normally say the word. In the first line of the poem, “O, my luve’s like a red, red rose” Burns replaces the letter “o” in the word love because with the Irish accent an American or British citizen would spell the word with a “u” because of the way it sounds (Burns, 974, l. 1) The way that Burns is able to bring the accent to life by words on paper is amazing to me. Other examples of this are the lines, “Till a’ the seas gang dry/ Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,/ And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;…And fare the weel, my only luve,/ And fare thee weel a while!” where Burns intentionally leaves out the letter “L”, as well as adds the double “E” to the word “Well” as to excentuate the accent that so many people can fall in love with (ll. 8-10, 13-14)”.

An example of how Burns uses the Irish language is in the vernacular that he chooses to use. The speaker refers to the subject of the poem as “my bonnie lass” which is how any man, young or old, would refer to the woman of his affection (l. 5). In America, we sometimes hear this term, “bonnie lass”, but only as jest or tease from a father or significant other to a young woman. The vocabulary used in the poem does not stop with just one phrase. Let us go back to lines 8 and 9, “Till a’ the seas gang dry/ Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,”, where Burns uses the word “gang” which we know does not mean what we, as Americans, know it to mean today (ll. 8-9). In these lines, and in the Irish language, “Gang” means “Go” or “Run”. To any educated person, this line is understood, but knowing that the author won’t dumb something down so that the less educated can understand it lets us know that we are expected to know, or look for, the meaning of a word in common use elsewhere.

In nearly every line the speaker of the poem expresses that his love is something of beauty, something to be cherished. The first two lines, “O, my luve’s like a red, red rose/ That’s newly sprung in June.” , gives us the understanding that the love the speaker has is as amazing and as beautiful as nature , but that, just as a rose fades and dies, his love cannot stay forever (ll. 1-2). This fact is expressed directly in the last two lines, “And I will come again, my luve,/ Though it were ten thousand mile.” , where the speaker tells his love that though I cannot stay now, I will come back, just like the red roses in the Spring (ll. 15-16).

Burns,   Robert. “A Red, Red Rose”. The Norton Introduction To Literature. 10^th ed. Ed. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2010. 974. Print.