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"Red Is the Rose" is a traditional Irish ballad about love lost (is there any other kind? I kid, I kid...) and it is sung to the melody of the Scottish song "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" (or sometimes just "Loch Lomond").

For those who are interesting in learning this song, here are the words (as I sang them) with chords (each verse and chorus follows the same pattern).

[Intro]
G (x2 measures)

C G/B Em Am C
G G/F# Em D G

G______G/F#__Em____Am__________C
Come o-ver the hills my handsome Irish lad
G______G/F#__Em_______Am_D
Come o-ver the hills to your dar--ling
C____________G/B_Em_____Am________C
You choose the rose love, and I'll make the vow
G_____G/F#___Em_______D_G
That I'll be your true love for-e-ver

[Chorus]
Red is the rose that in yon garden grows
Fair is the Lily of the Valley
Clear is the water that flows from the Boyne
And my love is fairer than any

Down by Killarney's green woods we did stray
The moon and the stars, they were shining
The moon shone its rays on his locks of golden waves
And he swore he'd be my love forever

[Chorus...]
G G/F# Em D G

'T was not for the parting of my sister, Kate
Nor for the grief of my mother
'T was all for the loss of my handsome Irish lad
That my heart is broken for ever

[Chorus...]
G G/F# Em D G

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If I receive enough polite requests for further instruction on how to play this song, I may (keyword: "may") create an instructional video.

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Although this song is traditionally addressed to a woman ("my bonnie Irish lass"), for many years I'd only heard (and thus sung) one version of the song: the one that appears on The Chieftains' album "An Irish Evening" that features Nanci Griffith singing, and either they or she (or all of them) decided that the lyrics would be changed to address a man instead (this is not the first time they've switched the sex of the addressee like that: "She Moved through the Fair" was changed to "He Moved through the Fair" on the album "The Long Black Veil"). While I have, at times, tried (just for shits and giggles) to address the song to a woman, although I can make it through the first verse without much trouble, my mind is usually focused enough on making sure I play the right chords that I wind up going into autopilot, so to speak, and wind up fucking up the lyrics in the second or third verse by addressing it, again, to a man.

So, I decided many a month ago, soon after I learned to play the song, that I'd just address it to a man and be done with it. This heterosexist, male-normative world needs more male singers singing from the perspective of women, as there are plenty of instances of women singing from the male perspective.

That said, you're free to interpret this as an expression of the love of a woman for a man or the love of a man for a man. Neither interpretation is inherently correct nor incorrect, and I'm not bothered by either one.

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Also, a minor note: I changed the phrase "in yonder garden grows," as the line appears traditionally, to "that in yon garden grows" because 'yonder' is an adverb, not a determiner, whereas 'yon' _is_ a determiner (and is more remote than 'that' and thus means something like 'that over there'). The 'here/there/yonder' paradigm is analogous to 'this/that/yon', but ne'er the twain shall mix! Moreover, for speakers of Japanese, 'this', 'that', and 'yon' are analogous to 'kono', 'sono', and 'ano'.