"Roses Are Red" is a love poem and children's rhyme with Roud Folk Song Index number 19798.[1] It has spawned multiple humorous and parodic variants.[2]
A modern standard version is:[3]
Roses are red
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.
Origins
The rhyme builds on poetic conventions that are traceable as far back as Edmund Spenser's epic The Faerie Queene of 1590:
It was upon a Sommers shynie day,
When Titan faire his beames did display,
In a fresh fountaine, farre from all mens vew,
She bath'd her brest, the boyling heat t'allay;
She bath'd with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.<ref>Spenser, The Faery Queene iii, Canto 6, Stanza 6: on-line text Archived March 4, 2016 at the Wayback Machine</ref>
A rhyme similar to the modern standard version can be found in Gammer Gurton's Garland, a 1784 collection of English nursery rhymes published in London by Joseph Johnson:[4]
The rose is red, the violet's blue,
The honey's sweet, and so are you.
Thou are my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,
And Fortune said it shou'd be you.<ref>I. Opie and P. Opie (1951). The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. 1997, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. p. 375.</ref>
References
- ^ "Roud Folksong Index S299266 Roses are red, violets are blue". Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. English Folk Dance and Song Society. Archived from the original on June 11, 2016. Retrieved May 20, 2016.
- ^ S. J. Bronner, American Children's Folklore (August House: 1988), p. 84.
- ^ Roud, Stephen (2010). The Lore of the Playground : One hundred years of children's games, rhymes and traditions. London: Random House Books. p. 420. ISBN 978-1-905211-51-7. OCLC 610824586
- ^ "Gammer G's Garland". British Library. Retrieved 2 January 2022.