For those listeners who are not familiar with Britten's life, the briefest of sketches will set these folksong arrangements in context. Born in Lowestoft in 1913, the son of the local dentist, his was very much a middle class provincial upbringing, with a prep school and public school education. At the age of thirteen he started. Down 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. 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.

Honda Elysion English Manual Of Style. Contents • • • • • • • • History [ ] Yeats indicated in a note that it was 'an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of,, who often sings them to herself.' The 'old song' may have been the ballad The Rambling Boys of Pleasure which contains the following verse: 'Down by yon flowery garden my love and I we first did meet. I took her in my arms and to her I gave kisses sweet She bade me take life easy just as the leaves fall from the tree. But I being young and foolish, with my darling did not agree.' The similarity to the first verse of the Yeats version is unmistakable and would suggest that this was indeed the song Yeats remembered the old woman singing.

The rest of the song, however, is quite different. Yeats's original title, 'An Old Song Re-Sung', reflected his debt to The Rambling Boys of Pleasure. It first appeared under its present title when it was reprinted in Poems in 1895. Poem [ ] Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. 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. Location [ ] It has been suggested that the location of the 'Salley Gardens' was on the banks of the river at Ballysadare near where the residents cultivated trees to provide roof materials. 'Salley' or 'sally' is a form of the Standard English word 'sallow', i.e., a tree of the genus. It is close in sound to the Irish word saileach, meaning. Musical settings [ ] The verse was subsequently set to music by to the traditional (also known as 'The Maids of Mourne Shore') in 1909.