There's a particular kind of sad that this song does, and I don't have a better word for it than RUEFUL. Not heartbroken, not bitter. Rueful. The sound of a man looking back at himself when he was young and stupid in love, and forgiving himself, and still wincing a bit. "But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears." That line. Lads. That line gets me every time and I've sung it a thousand times.
It's short. Two verses and you're done. But it sits in you for a week.
And here's the thing I love most about it, the thing that makes it perfect for a place like this shrine — it's not really a "found" old song at all. It's a PATCH. A reconstruction. A poet stitching a few half-remembered fragments back into a whole. Which, when you think about what we do here, gathering scraps of the Bog and arguing over which verse comes after the flea — well, it's the same job, isn't it.
A Bit of History
Right, here's the honest version, and I'll be careful not to dress it up.
The words are by William Butler Yeats — yer man, the poet — and he published them in 1889 in a book called The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. So that part we actually know, which is rare for me to be able to say.
But — and this is the gorgeous bit — Yeats didn't write it from nothing. He said himself, right in a note attached to the poem, that he was trying to reconstruct an old song from three lines he half-remembered an old woman singing. An old peasant woman in the village of Ballisodare, in Co. Sligo. She'd only sung him a scrap, or he'd only kept a scrap, and the rest was gone. So he built the song back up around the few lines that survived. The original title he gave it was even "An Old Song Re-Sung," which I think is the most honest title a song ever had.
So is it a traditional song or is it a Yeats poem? It's BOTH, and that's not a fudge. The bones are folk — a real fragment of a real old song somebody actually sang in Sligo. The body is Yeats. He's the man who patched the hole.
And then the music came LATER, which trips people up. The tune most everyone sings it to now is an old air called "The Maids of Mourne Shore" (you'll also see it written "The Maids of the Mourne Shore"), and Yeats's words got married to that air after the fact — the setting people credit is from the early 1900s. So the thing you hear in a session is three different bits of history glued together: a lost Sligo fragment, a Victorian poet's reconstruction, and an older Irish air it got fitted to. Layers on layers. (I find that wildly romantic and I won't apologise for it.)
A word on the spelling, because someone always asks. "Salley" isn't a woman's name. It's from the Irish saileach — willow. A salley garden was a willow planting, where you'd grow the rods for thatching and baskets and the like. So "down by the salley gardens" means down by the willows. Down by the river, more or less. Now you know, and you'll never un-know it.
Lyrics
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.
How to Sing It
Slow. SLOW. This is a slow air, not a singalong, and the worst thing you can do to it is rush. There's loads of room in those long lines — let them stretch. Lean on "easy." Lean on "foolish." Don't be afraid of the silence between the phrases.
Unaccompanied is gorgeous if your nerve holds. If you want something under you, the lightest fiddle or a slow guitar is plenty — but the melody (that's "The Maids of Mourne Shore") wants air around it, so whoever's playing should hold back and let the words breathe.
Two verses and OUT. Don't pad it, don't repeat the first verse at the end to make it longer (people do this and it weakens it). The whole power of the song is that it's brief and then gone. Like the love it's about, I suppose.
When to drop it: it's a turning-the-corner song, for that part of the night when the room's gone quiet and a bit tender. It sits in the same family as The Parting Glass — both rueful, both reflective, both best sung soft to a room that's already listening. And if you want the wistful Irish ache full strength, follow it with Carrickfergus and you'll have grown men staring into their pints.
Want the full words for the Bog, the song that actually starts most nights round here? They're over on the lyrics page. Different mood entirely — but that's the point of a good night. You need the roar AND the rue.
Take love easy, lads. I never did either, but you might.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin the cat sleeps THROUGH this one, which from him is the highest compliment a song can get. He only stays in the room for the music he respects. Gas creature, terrible critic.