![]() ![]() As well as providing willow shoots for thatching, they doubled up as a meeting place for young lovers. Slender shoots of willow were used to bind thatched roofs and so it was common to find small willow plantations close to villages in Ireland. This unison setting by Benjamin Britten of an Irish folk tune is a popular contest/festival choice. The Salley Gardens therefore simply means willow gardens. Sally Gardens Benjamin Britten - Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. Salley or sally comes from the Gaelic word saileach which means willow. Other composers including Rebecca Clarke, John Ireland and Benjamin Britten also set the words to music.īut it’s the original version, The Maids of Mourne, that most people still associate with the poem. The melody for Down by the Salley Gardens Benjamin Brittenĭown by the Salley Gardens was written as a poem and remained that way until 1909 when Herbert Hughes set it to music using the old Irish melody, The Maids of Mourne Shore. It refers to the young woman changing her mind about the relationship and money is said to play a part.ĭown by the Salley Gardens gives no specific reason for the failure of the relationship, and the effect may be stronger as we are left to make up our own minds. ![]() You Rambling Boys of Pleasure is longer and more complex than Yeats’ version. The words are very similar to Down by the Salley Gardens and it seems safe to assume that You Rambling Boys of Pleasure was the song Yeats heard being sung by the old woman. ![]() She said to take love easy as the leaves grew on the treeīut I was young and foolish and with my darling could not agree. I spied this pretty fair maid and these words to me she did say It was down by Sally’s Garden one evening late I took my way The song that Yeats heard the old woman singing was almost certainly the old Irish tune, You Rambling Boys of Pleasure. It was only changed to the Salley Gardens when it was published again in 1895 in his collection, Poems. He could only remember a few lines but acknowledged his debt to the original version by calling his new poem, An Old Song Re-sung. In a note on the poem, he said that he was trying to reconstruct an old song he had heard being sung by a woman in the village of Ballisodare in Sligo. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. Yeats published the poem in his collection, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889. Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. Yeats was trying to recreate an old Irish folk song We are not told why but the presumption is that he tried to move too fast and so frightened her away. However, he “was young and foolish and with her did not agree”. ![]() She urges him to “take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree”. It’s a kind of lament by a young man who meets a beautiful girl in the Salley Gardens but then loses her, presumably for failing to accept what she has to say. Ironically, considering it was written by a great poet regarded by many as a literary genius, the song is one of the simplest you will find anywhere in the Irish music repertoire. Down by the Salley Gardens, my love and I did meet W B Yeats Nevertheless, it has become one of the most recorded Irish songs of all time and has attracted the attention of performers from widely different musical backgrounds. This recording comes from Ian Bostridge’s 1999 album, The English Songbook.Down by the Salley Gardens has an unusual background for a song that has passed into the Irish folk music tradition.ĭown by the Salley Gardens was written by W B Yeats, who is generally known as one of Ireland’s greatest poets and not usually associated with being a song writer. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. The poem is by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats: Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. Also listen for the sudden harmonic surprise on the word “foolish.” Britten’s setting of The Salley Gardens is a great reminder of the sublime expressive power of simplicity. Listen to the way this piano line returns with interjections throughout the song. In the opening, haunting three-note fragments seem to be searching for a way forward. An undercurrent of continuous eighth notes runs throughout the song, suggesting a static, dreamlike atmosphere…a sense of motion within timelessness. Benjamin Britten’s 1943 setting of the Irish folk song, The Salley Gardens seems to float in midair with a surreal, hypnotic beauty. ![]()
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