"Down by the Salley Gardens" (Irish: Gort na Saileán)
is a poem by William Butler Yeats published in The
Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889. 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
Ballisodare, Sligo, 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...(+)
"Down by the Salley Gardens" (Irish: Gort na Saileán)
is a poem by William Butler Yeats published in The
Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889. 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
Ballisodare, Sligo, 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.
It has been suggested that the location of the "Salley
Gardens" was on the banks of the river at Ballysadare
near Sligo where the residents cultivated trees to
provide roof thatching materials. "Salley" or "sally"
is a form of the Standard English word "sallow", i.e.,
a tree of the genus Salix. It is close in sound to the
Irish word saileach, meaning willow. The verse was
subsequently set to music by Herbert Hughes to the
traditional air The Moorlough Shore (also known as "The
Maids of Mourne Shore") in 1909. In the 1920s composer
Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) set the text to her own
music. The composer John Ireland (1879–1962) set the
words to an original melody in his song cycle Songs
Sacred and Profane, written in 1929–31. There is also
a vocal setting by the poet and composer Ivor Gurney,
which was published in 1938. Benjamin Britten published
a setting of the poem in 1943, using the tune Hughes
collected. In 1988, the American composer John
Corigliano wrote and published his setting with the G.
Schirmer Inc. publishing company.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_by_the_Salley_Garde
ns).
Although originally written for Traditional Irish
instruments, I created this Interpretation of "Down by
the Salley Garden" for 2 Flutes & Celtic or Concert
(Pedal) Harp.