Roses Are Red

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For other uses, see Roses Are Red (disambiguation).
"Sugar is sweet" redirects here. For the song by the Party, see Sugar Is Sweet (song).
Not to be confused with Sweet Sugar (disambiguation) or Sugar Is Sweeter.

"Roses Are Red"
William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for "The rose is red", from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose
Nursery rhyme

"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

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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.[4]

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:[5]

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.[6]

References

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  1. ^ "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 11 June 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
  2. ^ S. J. Bronner, American Children's Folklore (August House: 1988), p. 84.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Spenser, The Faery Queene iii, Canto 6, Stanza 6: on-line text Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ "Gammer G's Garland". British Library. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  6. ^ I. Opie and P. Opie (1951). The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1997, 2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 375.