Ae Fond Kiss on Youtube

Here is a youtube video I was able to record before Jenny Ruth took her digital camera to Bolivia. This Robert Burns ballad I've sung for five years, but have stopped singing in public because it tends to bore people. My excellent Geddes & Grosset edition of The Complete Poems & Songs of Robert Burns has two hilarious footnotes for this song:

*Written on his parting from Clarinda. The verses are beautiful, but the idea of either party being 'broken-hearted' is purely fanciful.

It's a poem! & one written to a fictional "Nancy" at that. Even for Romantic criticism, accusing the poet of not actually being "broken-hearted" is a pretty harsh standard.

*These four lines [verse 4, "Had we never..."], Sir Walter Scott said, 'contain the essence of a thousand love tales'.

Thank you Sir Walter.