"Down by the Salley Gardens" Review

“Down by the Salley Gardens” Cover by the Rankin Family

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.

This poem by W. B. Yeats has its origin in an old Irish song, according to Jaffares*: Yeats apparently dug it out of a buried memory involving a peasant woman in the village of Ballysodare. The poem’s original title was “An Old Song Re-Sung” (Jaffares, 12). My very first introduction to this poem was through song. I typed “W. B. Yeats music” into YouTube and came up with this song: given how many people have covered the song over the years it has swiftly found itself embedded in “traditional” Irish culture, despite the fact it only came into the Irish people’s common consciousness with Yeats’s publication (see Jaffares). This poem, with its origin in music in the first place, is extremely adaptable to music, and thus fits with Professor Ophir’s observation that Yeats wished poetry to maintain an allusion to its roots in song. The repeating phrases, such as “snow-white,” “she bid me take life easy,” and “young and foolish,” give the poem a refrain-like quality. I absolutely love the theme of unrequited love in this poem: the view we get is from the perspective of the restless one, and not the one mourning for lost love. There are two beautiful images for “taking life easy”: the leaves that grow on the trees and the grass growing on the weir. The first brings in the fact that the lovers are in the “salley” gardens, or willow grove, so the young woman is drawing attention to the trees that surround them. The second image is stronger, I think, because the grass grows on the weir despite the fact the water is rushing by. The young woman, then, is urging her love to grow and flourish where he is planted, and let life move by around him. But he is “young and foolish,” and restless, I imagine, so he leaves love be. Now he is full of regret.

As for the Rankin Family’s cover of this song, I think it is extremely well done. They have only to open their mouths and one thinks of the “old country” from which Yeats originates. The comments below their version indicate that even those from Ireland were “fooled” by their authentic sound. Try this one: “Me ma loved your performances, and never knew you were Canadian! Just assumed you ‘Were from the oul' country because you were so good!’ Fair play tae ye! And God bless ye!”

*Jeffares, Alexander Norman. A New Commentary on the Poems by W. B. Yeats. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1984. (pp.12-13). Google Books. Web. 27 Jan. 2010.

Robin Anderson