Origin: Sally Gardens / Salley Gardens

Subject: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: SingsIrish Songs
Date: 19 Aug 99 - 09:24 PM

I know the tune is called "Maids of Mourne Shore", but where are the gardens? What are they? etc.

Mary Kate

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Tom Brett
Date: 19 Aug 99 - 09:44 PM

I believe it refers to Sligo and referenced by WB Yeats.

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Jack Hickman - Kingston, ON
Date: 20 Aug 99 - 12:47 AM

A sally is a willow tree, and they used withes of the willow tree to fasten thatching on roofs back in the old days in Ireland. I am told that each village had a bush of willow trees on the outskirts, primarily to provide the necessary material for thatching, and this bush was called the "sally gardens." It was also the 19th century equivalent of a "lovers' lane" where the young folk would go to be alone.

Jack Hickman

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: paddymac
Date: 20 Aug 99 - 05:00 AM

There is a tune named "Salley Gardens" as well as the song under discusion here, which, as noted above, uses a tune of a different name. The lyric is actually a poem of the same name by Yeats (Dublin born, but spent most of his life in Sligo). I had not heard the tale about the willow "garden" noted above. Seems plausible enough. I have seen and heard ardently argued debates as to whether the title refers to a place in Dublin or Sligo. I always suspected that a salley garden was either a completely mythological place, or so ubiquitous (sp?) as to not need to be specified. In any case, it is a great poem/song which needs only to be enjoyed rather than analyzed.

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Canberra Chris
Date: 20 Aug 99 - 05:16 AM

The sentiment of the song is very close to a poem by A.E. Houseman, 'When I Was One and Twenty', which is in exactly the same metre and can be sung to the same tune. The Clancy Brothers recorded the two intertwined, a verse of one sung, followed by the corresponding stanza of the other recited. I heard it on radio, but have not yet found the recording it came from.

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 20 Aug 99 - 05:28 AM

G'day,
The story goes that Yeats needed a song for some event like a garden party and wanted to use YOU RAMBLING BOYS OF PLEASURE. When he couldn't find a copy he wrote "Sally Gardens" instead.

Chris, I'm sure I have the version you're referring to but it'll take me a while to find it.

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 20 Aug 99 - 05:34 AM

Also, have a look at this (THE MAID OF MOURNE SHORE), especially the footnote.

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Lorraine
Date: 20 Aug 99 - 06:46 AM

Thank you I'm enjoying this discussion-Lorraine

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: SingsIrish Songs
Date: 20 Aug 99 - 02:53 PM

Great info! Thanks. And I love the version of Sally Gardens that Tommy Makem sings with the recitation of the Houseman poem between verses.

SingsIrish

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Sourdough
Date: 21 Aug 99 - 03:38 AM

Well, when all else fails, resort to the O.E.D. I did that and discovered a number of things.

There is no entry for "Sally Gardens" or "Salley Gardens".

"Sally" might be a corruption of a number of different words relating to willows, acacias and gum trees. However, all the species it refers to seem to be antipodal, I think all from Australia.

There is a third meaning for "sally" deriving from the military term that gave us "sally ports" in castle walls and "sallies" out against an enemy. Sally can be used to mean a breaking out of emotion in an unaccustomed way, i.e. letting loose. It is not much of a jump from there to a place near a village that is the "Lover's Lane".

Ah, ambiguity.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Mr Happy
Date: 02 Apr 06 - 01:59 PM

White Willow (Salix alba)

Irish Sailach (Willows in general) (family - Salicaceae)


Sailach - pronounced 'Sally'

see here:


http://www.british-trees.com/guide/whitewillow.htm

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Kaleea
Date: 02 Apr 06 - 02:38 PM

Now it all makes sense!

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Declan
Date: 02 Apr 06 - 07:19 PM

Crann Saileach in Gaelic translates as a Willow tree. It seems likely that the name, as with many other gaelic names derives from the latin. The subtitle of the Yeats poem is "an old song remembered". The words suggest that the old song was indeed "You rambling Boys of Pleasure".

There is also a well known reel called the "Sally Gardens". I think the only connection between the two is the title, Although the coincidence tends to give rise to confusion from time to time.

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: s&r
Date: 02 Apr 06 - 07:27 PM

I remeber researching this some time back and finding that the native Australian word for willow was sallee. Don't know where I found the ref

Stu

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: GUEST,HughM
Date: 03 Apr 06 - 08:09 AM

Hence also salicylic acid, from the willow.

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 Apr 06 - 08:58 AM

Here's what the Sing-out Book has to say:

In this poem (pub in his Crossways, 1889) Yeats attempted to reconstruct an old song from 3 lines he remembered an old peasant woman singing in the village of Ballisodare, Co. Sligo in the west of Ireland.

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 03 Apr 06 - 11:39 PM

G'day s&r,

My Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary (the 3rd edition, 1997, on my work desk) has sally/sallee as "any of several eucalypts and acacias resembling the willow". They derive it as a British dialect variant of "sallow²" ... and meaning ² for 'sallow' is: the willow tree ... ultimatly from the Latin salix (via Old High German and Norse).

There's no suggestion of a source in any of the hundreds of Aboriginal languages ... such things were a favourite delusion of Victorian era academics ... but rarely proved feasible, let alone true!

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: s&r
Date: 04 Apr 06 - 04:52 AM

Thanks Bob. I'd put it as a strange coincidence, but your explanation makes more sense.

This is an interesing article about the use of willow in Ireland for Baskets.

Stu

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 04 Apr 06 - 07:21 AM

G'day again Stu,

The early British settlers of Sydney - the first settlement, in 1788 - were quite concerned to find trees that could substitute for the willow. The quickest way of throwing up a minimal shelter - for the convicts and serving soldiers (the Officers and the Governor had canvas tents) was to construct "wattle & daub" huts. The tree they used, initially, with dark green springy branches and yellow globular flowers, was callicoma serratifolia and they called it "Black Wattle" for the dark branches and its use in wattle & daub.

When they found great numbers of acacias, with similar yellow globular flowers, they called all these "wattles" as well ... they weren't botanists - just settlers! Now most Australians think a "wattle" must be an acacia ... and forget that, by the priority rules of taxonomy, only the callicoma should be so called!

Anyway, to ponder the original question of this thread: I have always assumed that a "Sally Garden" (a 'willow garden') would be a pleasant green garden along a stream - lined with willows ... and a pretty place for dalliance. With that view, I have no problems with the location of the song's disappointed love theme.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Mr Red
Date: 04 Apr 06 - 02:19 PM

"As the grass grows on the wier" - & "in a filed down by the river". Where willows love to grow. It all hangs together when you have the context.

I was told Yeats denied authorship - though his wife confirmed he wrote it after his death. - anyone confirm such?

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: GUEST,Dan Druff
Date: 04 Apr 06 - 02:22 PM

I know Yeats was capable of many things (or, at least, that's what he told everybody), but composing Sally Gardens after his own death really is an achievement.

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Mr Red
Date: 04 Apr 06 - 04:38 PM

picky picky picky

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Mr Red
Date: 04 Apr 06 - 04:38 PM

decomposing?

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 05 Apr 06 - 10:14 AM

"Here's what the Sing-out Book has to say:

In this poem (pub in his Crossways, 1889) Yeats attempted to reconstruct an old song from 3 lines he remembered an old peasant woman singing in the village of Ballisodare, Co. Sligo in the west of Ireland. "

Subject: RE: Song history/origin: Sally Gardens
From: Big Jim from Jackson
Date: 05 Apr 06 - 10:25 AM

The song is often call "Down By The Willow Gardens". Didn't Ian and Sylvia record it that way? I've seen and heard some bluegrass versions with that title.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: mikesamwild
Date: 24 Mar 10 - 08:34 AM

Willows are associated with sadness in many folksongs song and that works at a subconcscious level for me.

Anyway thanks for the thread I've been singing Sally Gardens and getting fefd up of the syrupy lyrics ( and grass doesn't grow on weirs round this way anyway) so it's the Rambling Boys and 'we are young and the world is wide' for me. Even though i'm 70 and the world is getting more restricted!

Bits of it remind me of the last bits of My Love is Like a Red Red Rose as sung by Altan.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: GUEST,John Moulden
Date: 24 Mar 10 - 11:02 AM

There has been a lot of nonsense written about this song - here are some facts and some references to authoritative but opposing articles.

On its first publication in 1889, Yeats said it was "an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Ballysodare, Sligo, who often sings them to herself." Yeats' original title, "An Old Song Re-Sung", reflected this; it first appeared as "The Salley Gardens" when reprinted in 1895. In 1909, it was set by Herbert Hughes to the air The Maids of the Mourne Shore. Another vocal setting, by the poet and composer Ivor Gurney, was published in 1938.

There are two views as to which song it was that was re-sung:
There are two views – Michael Yeats in a Lecture in 1965 thought that it came from this, which had been reported by the Dublin City Councillor, Publican and song maker, PJ McCall to have been written down from memory by his father, John McCall (d. 1902) and that he, himself, had heard the song sung by a butcher, James Tierney, a butcher's porter, in Patrick Street, Dublin:

Down by the Salley Gardens my own true love and I did meet;
She passed the Salley Gardens a-tripping with her snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, just as the leaves fall from each tree;
But I being young and foolish, with my true love would not agree.

In a field by the river my lovely girl and I did stand,
And leaning on her shoulder I pressed her burning hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the stream flows o'er the weirs;
But I being young and foolish, I parted her that day in tears.

I wish I was in Banagher and my fine girl upon my knee.
And I with money plenty to keep her in good company.
I'd call for liquor of the best with flowing bowls on every side.
Kind fortune ne'er shall daunt me, I am young and the world's wide.

In my view and given that John McCall died in 1902, which gave him had thirteen years in which to construct this from his memory of another old song and his knowledge of Yeats' poem – the first two verses are too little different from Yeats' poem to be its origin rather than derived from it.

The second view is that of Hugh Shields in an article in the Trinity College Dublin Magazine, Hermathena, in 1965. (From 1954, Hugh Shields, a Lecturer in Medieval French at Trinity, collected songs across Ireland, especially in north Derry, and allied them with ballad sheets. His knowledge of the working of tradition was very extensive.) His chosen origin was "The Rambling Boys of Pleasure" a song known in tradition from Robert Cinnamond, Joe Holmes (and other) and widely on ballad sheets (see Bodleian Ballads) - This song includes several of Yeats' lines and a verse saying I wish I was in America which is very like John McCall's verse about Banagher.

If anyone wants the precise references, Michael Yeats' lecture was later published, I can supply them.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Tom - Swords & Songs
Date: 24 Mar 10 - 11:15 AM

This is probably totally irrelevant, but when I first heard the song, it had the standard two verses:

'Down by the Sally Gardens...
and
'In a field by the river...

But it also had two verses by A E Houseman:
'When I was one-and-twenty
    I heard a wise man say,
'Give crowns and pounds and jewels
    But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
    But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty,
    And so did not agree.

When I was one-and-twenty
    I heard him say again,
'The heart out of the bosom
    Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
    And sold for endless rue.'
Now I am two-and-twenty,
    And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

And I always thought this was a nice bit to have on the end of a relatively short song.

Tom

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 10:21 AM

The lines about taking love easy, "as the leaves grow on the tree", also occur in a Donegal song, "Lurgy's Stream" (a small river not far from Letterkenny and Kilmacrenan), but are no doubt found in many other traditional verses as well. John Moulden's note from yesterday includes the words "as the stream flows o'er the weirs", which seems more appropriate than "as the grass grows on the weirs", unless there's the intention to suggest the passage of many years (i.e. that would be required from grass to grow over a place of running water - unless in a dry Summer). This would be consistent with the leaves growing (over some time) on the trees rather than their falling from them, an image more linked to age than to youth.

Since there aren't, as far as I can see, any other discussions about this song, I wonder if I might ask here what interpretations people put on it? It's clearly cast as a memory, but of how long previously? Did the singer regularly meet the female, or did he only see her the once, passing by in the bare feet, and fall for her "at first sight"? How long after did she tell him to get lost; did he even follow her from the Salley Gardens as far as the field by the river all on the one day....? What reasons might there be for his (still) being full of tears, assuming that he is no longer Young and Foolish but, at most, one of these? Answers on very large postcards.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: meself
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 10:53 AM

To my eye, the picture is of two "young lovers" who habitually meet in suitably idyllic locales. They "lean" together; she places her hand on his shoulder; she talks to him in a familiar way. However, his urgency, his "neediness", perhaps his seriousness, his self-righteousness, his ambition, his inflexibility, is too much for her, and she dumps him. Now (that is, in the eternal present of the poem), he is no longer "young and foolish" in the sense that the speaker in the Houseman poem is no longer so: chronologically, perhaps only a few months have passed, but the speaker feels much older, sadder, and wiser. That does preclude his still being "full of tears", by any means.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: meself
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 10:55 AM

Sorry - "does NOT preclude ... "

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: shipcmo
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:09 AM

Well,
Family tradition had it a little different.
Cheers,
George Salley

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: GUEST,Longlankin
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:18 AM

"When I was One and Twenty" is from Houseman's "Shropshire Lad". Like a number of Houseman's poems it makes a nice little song on its own (and has been set to music by Butterworth). Sally Gardens is also a good enough song to stand on its own. They both deserve better than being tagged on to each other to make it a decent length song (what is a decent length for a song anyway?).

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 11:27 AM

Ah, but hold on, "meself": is it really justified to imagine them habitually "leaning", at least from the words? It's the male/singer's shoulder that is "leaning", which I take to imply a certain dejection at the time (and indeed, I've heard the word sung as "drooping" and "weary", though Yeats' word is "leaning", going along with the way she "laid" her hand &c). I'm thoroughly in accord with your third sentence, not least in the number and variety of possible explanations, but do tend to see the singer as remembering youthful experience from a long time ago, which does lead to the complication of wondering why he's (still) full of tears, presumably about the experience mentioned.

On the other hand, it's a song that works without any need for such analysis.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Amos
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:25 PM

"One and Twenty", as I have said elsewhere, makes a fine talking blues.


A

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:46 PM

A bit of ~Michael~'s 'legendary pedantry' coming up ~~~

HOUSMAN, pleas ~~ no middle 'e'...

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 12:47 PM

... but an 'e' on end of 'pleasE', nonetheless ~~ sorry!

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: ChillToad
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 02:04 PM

I extend the song by singing the two standard verses, then combine the first half of the first verse with the second half of the second verse (if that makes sense).

I've heard the "...take love easy" and "...take life easy" lines switched around by different performers. I go for the "Down boy, love mustn't be rushed or you'll ruin it" followed by "Well you've blown that, hope you don't spoil the rest of your life in the same way" kind of view. Or maybe I'm just projecting....

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 02:40 PM

Sorry I didn't see this until now.

I've worked in a number of historic forts for the National Park Service, some of them places that had forts at one time that still retain some of the old functional names. I haven't worked at any castles, but it would apply there as well.

The Sally Port is the back or postern gate out of a fort or fortified place (like a castle); when I worked at the Statue of Liberty (atop the old star-shaped Fort Wood), the sally port was the smaller back door we used to take people out if we didn't want to go through the big front doors. A door like that is secure, and while it is strategic for sending out troops when needed in a fight, is useful for when you're living and working in a fort and want to work on the grounds around the outside of it. Like in the garden. There was one of those at San Juan Island NHP also, in English camp, if I recall correctly. If you don't have room inside for a kitchen garden, it's practical that it be close to the fort walls, and near the door into the domestic area of the fort, etc.

To see the sally port at the Statue of Liberty (Fort Wood when it was there alone with no pedestal or statue) get the movie Splash. When Darryl Hannah comes ashore in NYC to find the Tom Hanks character they pretend it is the front entrance to the statue, but it was actually filmed at the sally port (they just closed part of the island for filming, but they didn't close the island to visitors). She has his wallet with her, and arrives nude on the grounds at the statue. Ron Howard's folks didn't tell the NPS that there was nudity in the scene--that freaked them out a little.

So, the sally garden in that context is the kitchen garden or it could be a pleasure garden outside the alternate exit from the fort. In skimming all of the discussion above about sally gardens in various localities I didn't see anything that would suggest that there wasn't a fort or castle nearby that had a sally port that gave the garden it's name. I'd be willing to bet real money that the terms sally port and sally garden were in use for a long time in the UK or Europe before they made their way over here, possibly as artifacts of activities that happened in a given area long time ago. In communities that had some history of an old fortified structure, it makes sense that there are a few sally gardens around the English-speaking world.

I sounds to me like grasping at straws to convert salix (willow) to give the name to the garden. It just doesn't make sense. I have the impression that willow is more likely to be called withy rather than sally.

SRS

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: mikesamwild
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 02:56 PM

thanks John Moulden that clears the weir up for me and I like the link with Rambling Boys

a very helpful thread

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: GUEST,John Moulden
Date: 27 Mar 10 - 12:43 PM

Thanks mikesamwild. The sally port is only a vague possibility and not in my view very likely. Withy is the English dialect word for willow - sally is the Irish. It is widely used as in the Dublin children's version of the Cruel Mother popularized by the Dubliners - Down by the river Sailagh.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: mikesamwild
Date: 27 Mar 10 - 01:45 PM

hi John

In Manchester there is Withington and Wythenshawe and next door is Salford and Sale is nearby. Maybe older names from the 'Celtic' Britons who were conquered by the Romans and then by the Saxons and Normans but many of whose placenames live on.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Mar 10 - 02:17 PM

I've also been mulling a way for "aller" to cross the channel and acquire the ce or s sound when it is Anglicised. A passage area with a garden nearby?

SRS

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: mikesamwild
Date: 27 Mar 10 - 02:18 PM

Sally in Our Alley ?

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Tootler
Date: 27 Mar 10 - 08:56 PM

Maybe older names from the 'Celtic' Britons who were conquered by the Romans and then by the Saxons and Normans but many of whose placenames live on.

Sally is much more likely to have come from the Latin for willow, salix. The botanical name for the Weeping Willow is IIRC Salix Salix.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Mar 10 - 09:17 PM

Salix babylonica last time I heard.

Subject: Lyr Add: DOWN BY THE SALLEY GARDENS (W B Yeats)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Mar 10 - 11:41 PM

No one has seen fit yet to cite the little poem by Yeats:

Lyr. Add: Down by the Salley Gardens
W. B. Yeats
1
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.
2
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.

An Anthology of Modern Verse, ed. A. Methuen, Methuen & Co.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Tootler
Date: 28 Mar 10 - 04:37 PM

Salix babylonica last time I heard.

I stand corrected (well sit actually!)

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Tootler
Date: 28 Mar 10 - 07:17 PM

Maura O'Connell and Karen Matheson from the Transatlantic Sessions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2UZReQGNVI

They create a third verse by reprising the first two lines of the first verse and the last two lines of the second verse. Together with the instrumental verse it makes a satisfying arrangement.

Superb performance all round.

Notice the attribution "lyrics: trad - pub. W B Yeats 1889"

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Mar 10 - 08:16 PM

I have two collections of Yeats' poems, different to Q's, and the version in each one is identical in every respect to the one quoted by Q. That's quite a relief. A year or so ago I tried to get an original/definitive version of "On Raglan Road" by Patrick Kavanagh. What a minefield!

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 01:58 AM

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 01:59 AM

The song appears in The Richard Dyer-Bennet Folk Song Book published in 1971. Here is his introduction to the song:

Down by the Sally Gardens
[Traditional Irish Tune]
The words are by William Butler Yeats, and the tune is traditional. Oliver St. John Gogarty, the late Irish writer and physician and, incidentally, the prototype of James Joyce's Buck Mulligan, told me the following anecdote. Gogarty and Yeats were attending a John McCormack concert in Dublin some fifty years ago and McCormack, in response to a demand for encores, said, "I will sing one of our beloved Irish folk songs, 'The Sally Gardens.'" Then, without attributing the words to Yeats, he sang the song hauntingly. As the famous pianissimo died away, and before the thunder of applause, Yeats turned to Gogarty and whispered, "Were it not for the damnable articularity of the man!"

"Sally" is footnoted as meaning Willow. Does anyone know whether "sally" or "salley" is the preferred spelling?
- Phil

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 08:50 AM

The spelling is a tricky one. As Yeats rendered it "salley" perhaps we should prefer that.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: meself
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 02:25 PM

It would take damnable articularity just to be able to say 'damnable articularity'. I suppose it would be easier if you could actually keep a straight face while saying it ....

Having said that, and admitting that I'm a bit thick - Were WHAT not for the damnable articularity of the man? Not the first time ol' WB has left me bewildered ....

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 02:35 PM

sally is the preferred spelling,they are sally willows.
its not a question of preferring anything it is question of what is the norm.
singular sally, plural sallies

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 02:35 PM

Salix caprea
( Weeping Sally Willow

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: mikesamwild
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 02:42 PM

What is the Irish spelling for willow JM said it was sally in Irish so probably reached these Isles before the Romans with their Aspirin bark

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: MartinRyan
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 02:56 PM

The Irish language (Gaeilge) has both sail and saileach for willow (the first is pronounced roughly Sall as in Sally, the second Saal-yuk, roughly). They're both believed to be loanwords from Latin.

Regards

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 05:22 PM

Australians use sally for eucalypts and acacias that resemble willows.
Nilson, Timber trees of New South Wales, 1884; also later.

sallow 1. a plant of the genus Salix, willows.
Old word, 14th C. or earlier, OHG and OE, many variants; sally is common in Ireland. 'Salwes' in Chaucer. In poetry by Shelley, Tennyson and Cowper as well as Yeats.

No particular willow species is indicated.

All of the above from the OED.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 08:04 PM

I think what Yeats meant was, "I should be really pissed off that McCormack used my words but didn't credit me, but, what the hell, he sings so well that I can't stay angry." or something like that.

Since I read the quote I've been secretly hoping that someone would accuse me of damnable articularity, but no one I know has any idea what it means either.
- Phil

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: meself
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 12:31 AM

Okay, thanks; that helps - I think -

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 12:41 AM

So I pulled up the library access to the OED:

n4. One of several eucalypts or acacias that resemble willows in habit or appearance; (see quot. 1965).

1884 A. NILSON Timber Trees New South Wales 22 A[cacia] falcata.Hickory; Sally;..Willow. 1889 J. H. MAIDEN Useful Native Plants Austral. 149 Acacia falcata,..'Hickory'. 'Lignum-Vitae'. 'Sally'. Ibid. 250 Eucalyptus stellulata,..'Sally' or 'Black Gum'. Ibid. 335 Acacia falcata... Called variously 'Hickory',..and 'Sally' or 'Sallee'. 1932 R. H. ANDERSON Trees New South Wales 58 Snow Gum or White Sally. Ibid., Black Sally..Also known as Sally or Muzzlewood. 1941 BAKER Dict. Austral. Slang. 62 Sally: an acacia. 1949 J. WRIGHT Woman to Man 17 In the olive darkness of the sally-trees Silently moved the air. 1957 Forest Trees Austral. (Austral. Forestry & Timber Bureau) 96/2 Swamp gum or broad leaved sally..occurs in cold and damp situations. Ibid. 144/1 White sallee is usually only 30-60 feet in height. 1965 Austral. Encycl. VII. 539/2 Sallee, or sally, a corruption of the English 'sallow' which is applicable to certain willow species..and commonly used for Australian eucalypts and wattles that are supposed to resemble them in habit or foliage. Black sallee and white sallee are the names standardized in the timber trade for the cold-loving Eucalyptus stellulata and E. pauciflora respectively. Acacia floribunda and A. prominens are among the eastern wattles which have been called sally.

Then I entered "salley" and was given the choice of "sallow" or "sally" so I selected "sallow" and it brought me to this:

Forms: . 1 sealh, (seal, salh, salch); . 4-5 salwe, (4 salew, salugh), 5-6 salgh(e, salow(e, (5 salwhe, 6 sallowe, sallo, 7 salloo), 4- sallow; . [1 sali-], 3 selihe, salyhe, 5-6 saly, 6 salye, 6, 9 salley, 7- sally. (See also E.D.D., and the forms placed under SAUGH.)

1. A plant of the genus Salix, a willow; chiefly, in narrower sense, as distinguished from 'osier' and 'willow', applied to several species of Salix of a low-growing or shrubby habit: see quot. 1866. Also, one of the shoots of a willow.

αa700 Epinal Gloss. 892 Salix, salch. a800 Erfurt Gloss. 1767 Salix, salh. c1000 Sax. Leechd. II. 18 Wi heafod ece enim sealh & ele.

β1377-8 Durham Acc. Rolls (Surtees) 131 In posicione de Sallowys juxta ripam de Wer, xxd. c1386 CHAUCER Wife's Prol. 655 Who so that buyldeth his hous al of salwes..Is worthy to been hanged on the galwes! 1388 WYCLIF Lev. xxiii. 40 And e schulen take to ou..salewis [1382 withies] of the rennynge streem. c1450 LYDG. & BURGH Secrees 2014 Afftir, ovir a ryveer rennyng, To be set Arrayed to thyn estat, With salwys, wyllwys Envyronnd preperat. 1555 EDEN Decades 38 Elmes, wyllowes, and salowes. 1583 L. M[ASCALL] tr. Bk. Dyeing 76 Take cole of a willo or sallo. 1697 DRYDEN Virg. Georg. II. 573 Sallows and Reeds, on Banks of Rivers born. 1725 T. THOMAS in Portland Pap. (Hist. MSS. Comm.) VI. 131 There is a small shrub growing over the greatest part of it ['the Carr', near Carlisle] which they call soft sallows. 1782 J. SCOTT Poet. Wks. 96 And lofty sallows their sweet bloom display. 1818 SHELLEY Pr. Wks. (1880) III. 18 We sit with Plato by old Ilissus..among the sweet scent of flowering sallow. 1859 TENNYSON Merlin & V. 223 A robe..In colour like the satin-shining palm On sallows in the windy gleams of March. 1866 Treas. Bot., Sallow, a name for Salix cinerea, S. Caprea, and the allied species, which are not flexible like the osier, but furnish the best charcoal for gunpowder. 1907 Gentl. Mag. July 38 The yellow sallows, locally sallys, which the cottage children call palms, flame in gold.

γc1000 Ags. Ps. (Th.) xxxvi. 2 On sali[um] we sarie, swie elome, ure organan up-ahengan. a1300 E.E. Psalter cxxxvi. 2 In selihes [v.r. salyhes, wilthes] in mide ofe ite Our organes henge we yhite. 1483 Cath. Angl. 317/1 Salghe for Saly A.), salix. 1664 EVELYN Sylva xix. 39 Of the Withy, Sally, Ozier, and Willow. Ibid. 40 We have three sorts of Sallys amongst us: The vulgar..and the hopping Sallys..: And a third kind..having the twigs reddish. 1694 W. WESTMACOTT Script. Herb. 222 Sallies grow the faster, if planted within the reach of the Water. 1750 W. ELLIS Mod. Husbandm. IV. II. 41 (E.D.S.). 1882 W. Worc. Gloss., Sallies, willow-boughs.

    2. The wood of the sallow tree.

βc1400 Lanfranc's Cirurg. 118 If e heed be smyte wi a lit drie staf as of salow. 1646 SIR T. BROWNE Pseud. Ep. II. v. 88 Smal-coale..is made of Sallow, Willow, Alder, Hasell, and the like. 1658 Hydriot. iii. 44 Sallow..makes more Ashes then Oake. 1843 HOLTZAPFFEL Turning, etc. I. 104 Sallow (Salix caprea), is white, with a pale-red cast, like red deal, but without the veins. 1882 Athenæum 26 Aug. 271/2 A Sussex trug..is a flat basket..of flakes of sallow braced with ash.

γ1546 Yorks. Chantry Surv. (Surtees) I. 113 Ther is a wood..conteynyng..xx acres of okes, asshes, salyes and other woodes. 1582 in W. H. Turner Select. Rec. Oxford (1880) 424 Spoylinge of hasells, salleys, and other woods readie for sale. 1640 BP. REYNOLDS Passions xxxvii. 453 They doe not take Sally, or Willow, or Birch, and such other Materialls. 1810 W. H. MARSHALL Rev. Board Agric., W. Departm. 275 The softer woods, such as ash, sallies, alder, are regularly cut from twelve to fourteen years' growth. 1835 J. WILSON Biog. Blind 212 The old harp..the front of which is white sally, the back of fir.
    3. a. A collectors' name for certain moths the larvæ of which feed on the sallow or willow; esp. a moth of the genus Xanthia.

1829 J. F. STEPHENS Syst. Catal. Brit. Ins. II. 98. 1832 J. RENNIE Conspect. Butterfl. & M. 85. 1880 O. S. WILSON Larvæ Brit. Lepidopt. 270.
    b. ? = sally-fly (see 4b).

1902 Webster's Dict., Suppl., Sally, a stone fly.
    4. a. attrib. as sallow (or sally) bush, charcoal, land, pole, stake, switch, tree, twig, willow, wood.

1883 Eng. Illustr. Mag. Nov. 69/2 A few low *sallow bushes.
--------------------------------------------------------------
1615 MARKHAM Eng. Housew. 81 Take of *Sallow Charcole vj. ounces.
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1907 Gentl. Mag. July 38 Down by the river we have the Sallens, or *Sally lands.
----------------------------------------------------------------
1898 B'ham Daily Post 26 Mar. (E.D.D.), 'White and black *Sally poles' for sale.
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c1440 Pallad. on Husb. XII. 139 And put a *saly stake in hit.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1802 H. MARTIN Helen of Glenross I. 55 A *sally switch.
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1502 ARNOLDE Chron. (1811) 188 Take..half soo myche of coles of *salow or of wylow tree. 1850 K. H. DIGBY Compitum III. 206 A brook that winds through bending sally trees.
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c1440 Pallad. on Husb. IV. 18 And softe a *saly twigge aboute hym plie.
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1776-96 WITHERING Brit. Plants (ed. 3) II. 54 *Sallow Willow. Salix caprea... This is perhaps the most common of all our willows.
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c1790 J. IMISON Sch. Art II. 17 Charcoal is to be chosen of *sallow wood.
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    b. Special comb.: sally-fly, some kind of stone fly; sallow kitten, a moth (see quot.); sallow moth, a moth of the genus Xanthia (Cassell's Dict.); sally picker Anglo-Irish, a name for the Chiffchaff, Sedge Warbler and Willow Warbler; sallow thorn, a plant of the genus Hippophae; sallow (wattle), one of several Australian acacias that resemble willows in habit or foliage. sallow withe, withy [= G. salweide] = sense 1.

1787 BEST Angling (ed. 2) 114 The Yellow *Sally Fly. Comes on about the twentieth of May... It is a four winged fly; as it swims down the water its wings lie flat on its back.
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1880 O. S. WILSON Larvæ Brit. Lepidopt. 189 Dicranura furcula, Linn. The *Sallow Kitten.
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1885 SWAINSON Provinc. Names Birds 25, 26, 28 *Sally picker (Ireland).
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1847 W. E. STEELE Field Bot. 157 Hippophae. L. *Sallow~thorn.
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1884 A. NILSON Timber Trees New South Wales 21 A[cadia] dealbata.Silver Wattle; Sallow. 1965 Austral. Encycl. VII. 539/2 A[cacia] longifolia, A. mucronata and several related species with long flower-spikes are known as sallow wattles in Victoria.
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1657 THORNLEY tr. Longus' Daphnis & Chloe 68 The Goats gnaw'd the green *Sallow With in pieces.
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1893 Wiltsh. Gloss., *Sally-withy, a willow.

Grist for the mill!

SRS

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 12:57 AM

I wasn't going to attempt the diacriticals for all of that, but then, the online OED does kind of just dump it on the page. You can get this at any library, or if someone wants an online version, I can see if I can save that page as a PDF and email it to you.

SRS

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 04:40 AM

Sallow as an English name for willows has been applied to several species. Off the top of my head I can think of common sallow for Salix cinerea ssp. atrocinerea, eared sallow for S. aurita and great sallow as an alternative name for the goat willow, S. caprea. The latter, to contradict our learned friend above, is not the weeping willow, that epithet belonging to the very different S. babylonica (or a hybrid) as has been stated before. From all that's been said in the thread it would appear that Yeats would have had little justification for inserting that 'e' if he'd intended a connection with willows. But did he? :-)

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 04:50 AM

Wiktionary states that salley is an obsolete spelling of sally. Annoyingly, it doesn't indicate when it became obsolete. Presumably, back in the day (as they say) it was regarded as correct.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 12:55 PM

I'd heard something like the Yeats/Gogarty/McCormack story before, only the song in that case was one of the "Tin-Pan Alley", pseudo-Irish songs that McCormack sang so often and so well (Rachmaninov once said he sang good songs well - and bad songs better). However, I'd remembered Yeats's words as, "Oh, the damnable clarity", which I took to mean that he thought it a pity that everyone could hear what the sixty-year old, smiling public man clearly thought was rhyming drivel. It would be really unlike McCormack not to attribute the words, since he and Herbert Hughes actually collected some of Hughes' "Irish Country Songs" together and in a couple of radio broadcasts from America which were recorded, McCormack does give credit to accompanists and arrangers &c.

In my mischievous childhood, a "sally rod" was a feared instrument in the hands of a grandmother.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Penny S.
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 01:13 PM

This casts some light on the yellow flowered plant I saw in the garden centre today which I thought was mimosa, or wattle, and was labelled acacia.

Penny

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 01:47 PM

yeats was a fascist.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: meself
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 02:24 PM

Oh - that explains it!

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 02:59 PM

Wiktionary is hardly in the class of the OED.
Spellings go obsolete when few use them; putting a date to this is approximation.

(Ice box is an obsolete term for fridge but I still use it occasionally- or is fridge obsolete as well?)

Mimosa and wattle are both common names for various species of the Mimosaceae. Popular usage differs from area to area and person to person.

- Trees or shrubs, very rarely herbs; leaves mostly bipinnate, rarely simply pinnate; flowers bisexual, small, spicate, racemose or capitate, actinomorphic, 3-6-usually 5-merous; calyx tubular, valvate or very rarely (Parkineae imbricate, 5-lobed or toothed; petals valvate, free or connate into a short tube, mostly hypogynous; stamens equal in number to the sepals or more numerous or indefinite, free or monadelphous; anthers small, 2-locular, opening lengthwise, often with a deciduous gland at the apex; ovary superior; fruit a legume or indehiscent; seeds with scanty or no endosperm.
.............
Mimosaceae differ from the other two families of the 'Leguminosae' by their actinomorphic (regular) flowers and valvate petals, the latter frequently connate into a lobed corolla.........

Now you know.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 03:04 PM

Yeats was a fascist? Yer mudder wears army boots.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 03:33 PM

Yes I know Wiktionary is not very classy and you'll recall that I did express annoyance with it.

To say that Yeats was a fascist is very simplistic. His politics weren't up there with his poetry, that's for sure. It's true he dabbled with non-democratic ideas and occasionally expressed sympathies for Musso, but he turned firmly against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, siding with the Republicans. And he never actually acted out fascism, did he. Not exactly my kind of bloke politically, but let's at least not misrepresent the man.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 04:15 PM

Thanks, Q!

I saved that selection as a PDF, since I happened to be working in the OED again this afternoon. Send a PM if any of you want it. That form preserves the diacriticals.

So now you're into mimosa? That's a tree that originated in Persia, last time I researched it. The flower is like some small "fairy duster" flowers one finds in the desert Southwest. Legume family. Humming birds and sphinx moths both are attracted to it. I kind of doubt that mimosa would like growing in the UK, but it certainly could have been carried there sometime in the last couple of thousand years. ;-D

SRS

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 05:22 PM

Several species of Mimosa sensu strictu are grown as 'stove' (greenhouse) plants in England.
The spring flower sold as 'Mimosa' is Acacia decurrens var. dealbata
The so-called 'sensitive plant' is Mimosa pudica
Sanders' Encyclopaedia of Gardening

Acacias of several species are called 'wattles' in the UK and Australia.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 11:19 PM

We have lots of acacias in the prairie and desert of the Americas. They're very sharp (with names like "cat claw acacia").

SRS

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Effsee
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 11:22 PM

Jesu H...this is turning into a gardening thread!

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Mar 10 - 08:44 AM

That would be gardening twine, surely.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Mar 10 - 03:08 PM

I don't suppose it hurts to sort out the botanicals under discussion here in relation to "salley" or "sally" if the general conclusion is that the term refers to a willow of some sort. Common names in one place may refer to a completely different plant in another. Our English-language readership here on Mudcat is worldwide.

SRS

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Mar 10 - 06:05 PM

We botanists have always preferred the Latin anyway. Universal lingo an' all that.

Steve B.Sc.(Hons.) (Imperial College 1972, Botany, boozers' class)

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Mar 10 - 06:34 PM

I spent a lot of time as an NPS naturalist and USFS forester with those scientific names, but in case you haven't checked lately, many of those are changing, as are the families and connections up that chart as they work out the genome connections between plants. Like the lotus and the plane tree being close relatives (or is it the water lily and the plane tree? At any rate, lotus and water lily aren't actually related, apparently.) It's almost not safe to go out in the garden with your old botanical key any more. ;-D

SRS

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Mar 10 - 08:00 PM

I'm very much a CTW Excursion Flora man. I back it up for modern nomenclature with my Fitter/Blamey picture book. My brain works in latin but my gob works in lyrical English.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: mikesamwild
Date: 01 Apr 10 - 08:10 AM

I accept the loan word to Irish from Latin. What's its Indo-Europen origin to Latin and why does salacious mean naughty? Iis it from the same root as salty. Is willow bark salty. Just off to chew some pussy willow ( or palm as we called it round Easter!)


Now - the pussy gardens , hmmmm

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 01 Apr 10 - 10:53 AM

Well, "sale" in French is approximately the equivalent of "dirty" in English English (Scots English would have "maukit", "manky", "clarty" or "clatty"), and it would be relatively easy to trace the route to "salacious"; no doubt there's a Latinate origin, too.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Tootler
Date: 01 Apr 10 - 12:12 PM

You find manky and clarty in North East England as well

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Apr 10 - 01:20 PM

"Manky", I recall from National Service in early 1950s, was the common, non-regional, army adjective for insufficiently clean and smart kit.

"Clarty" {& associated verb "clart" ~ as in

"We're down here in t'cellar ay, where muck clarts up t'winders;
We've burned all our coals up & we're now burning cinders.
If landlord he do come then he'll never find* us;
For we're down here in t'cellar ay, where muck clarts up t'winders"

which I learned from an army & Cambridge friend from Salford, Lancashire}

appears to be quite widespread Northern English as well as Scots.

*[pron with short 'i']

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Apr 10 - 01:23 PM

... above song about clarty windows to tune of 'Oranges·&·Lemons', btw.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Apr 10 - 01:43 PM

... &, on further recollection & in interests of accuracy, my friend sang 3rd line as "If bum-bailey do come" {rather than "landlord"}.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 01 Apr 10 - 02:21 PM

Thanks for those!   With regard to "manky", I wonder does it come from French, "manquer", since this would accord with the sense of "insufficient" &c.?

But what of the Sally Gardens?

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Taconicus
Date: 20 Aug 10 - 12:48 PM

Rose Connelly (Down in the Willow Garden) seems to be an American variation/offshoot of the Irish Down in the Salley Gardens, though with a very different (and gory) story line. The tunes are similar as well. Here's a 1963 recording of Rose Connelly from Mountain Home, Arkansas which uses the burgaloo wine (Virginia pear wine) lyric.

BTW, a Scots dictionary also shows Sally or salley as meaning (or a pronunciation of) sallow (from the Middle English salwe), meaning the sallow tree, a type of willow tree.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Taconicus
Date: 20 Aug 10 - 12:53 PM

In the '63 Arkansas version linked above, burgaloo wine seems to have evolved to burglar's wine, and sabre (saber) is pronounced sabe-ree.

Subject: RE: Origin: Sally Gardens
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Oct 16 - 06:18 PM

The earliest extant version (1784) has 'Sally's Garden'. There were many pleasure gardens like Ranelagh, Vauxhall, Covent, Cupar's in the large cities in the 18th century and one of the main features was singing. In fact a large number of our folk songs can be traced back to these entertainments, particularly those love songs that used flowery language. Dublin, Edinburgh, London had these pleasure gardens.

The earliest versions of Rambling Boys of Pleasure c1810 didn't have this verse. It wasn't joined to the RBOP verses until about 1850.