Maura O'Connell with Karen Matheson - Down by the Sally Gardens

 

 

Down by the sally gardens my love and I did meet

She passed the sally gardens with little snow white feet

She bid me take love easy as the leave grow on the tree

But I being young and fooling with her did not agree.

 

In a field down by the river my love and I did stand

And leaning on my 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.

      William Butler Yeats published this poem in his collection, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889. 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. I sometimes think this one is the best folk melody ever written, even when I compare it with Silent Night, Greensleeves or Amazing Grace. Folky beauty.