ABSTRACT
This is perhaps the most common love-song in the traditional repertoire. The use of flower and herb symbols as a substitute for various emotional states and stages in a love relationship – thyme for virginity, rue for loss of virginity, the rose for passion, willow for regret, and so on – has long been a feature of English and Scots love-poetry. The song known as ‘Seeds of Love’/‘Sprig of Thyme’, which uses these symbols, has a distinctive form. It is possible that the two titles at one time represented two different songs but, as many collectors have remarked after having thrown up their hands in despair at trying to separate the two, they have become inextricably intertwined.
