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Updated 04/26/2013

 


Down by the Sally Gardens

Down by the Sally Gardens is an Irish folk song. The lyrics were written by W.B. Yeats in 1889.  William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure, brother of the artist Jack Butler Yeats and son of John Butler Yeats. He signed his works W. B. Yeats. Yeats, though born to an Anglo-Irish mother and father, was perhaps the primary driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and was co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. Yeats also served as an Irish Senator. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee described as "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".  The verse was subsequently set to music by Herbert Hughes to the air The Maids of the Mourne Shore in 1909.

Herbert Hughes (1882 – 1937) was an Irish composer, music critic and collector of folk songs.  He was born and brought up in Belfast, Ireland, but completed his formal music education at the Royal College of Music, London, graduating in 1901. Subsequently he worked as a music critic most notably for The Daily Telegraph from 1911 to 1932.

Described as having an “ardent and self-confident manner”, Hughes is first heard of in an Irish musical capacity (beyond being honorary organist at St Peter’s Church on the Antrim Road at the age of fourteen) collecting traditional airs and transcribing folk songs in North Donegal in August 1903 with his brother Fred, F.J. Bigger, and John Campbell. Dedicated to seeking out and recording such ancient melodies as were yet to be found in the remoter glens and valleys of Ulster, he produced in 1904 Songs of Uladh with Joseph Campbell, illustrated by his brother John and paid for by Bigger.

Continually encouraged by Bigger, and in collaborations with the poets Joseph Campbell and Padraic Colum (met at Bigger's house Ardrigh), and Yeats himself, Hughes arranged and produced three celebrated Irish songs that have and will long outlast his memory, My Lagan Love, She Moved Through the Fair and Down By The Sally Gardens. A dispute with Hamilton Harty over related copyright was on Bigger’s advice never pursued.
 

Lyrics by William Yeates

It was down by the Sally Gardens my love and I did meet
She crossed the Sally Gardens with little snow-white feet
She bid me take love easy as the leaves grow on the tree
But I was young and foolish and with her did not agree

In a field down 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

Down by the Sally Gardens, my love and I did meet
She crossed the Sally Gardens with little snow-white feet
She bid me take love easy as the leaves grow on the tree
But I was young and foolish and with her did not agree