It was down by SallyвЂ™s Garden one evening late I took my way The song that Yeats heard the old woman singing was almost certainly the old Irish tune, You Rambling Boys of Pleasure. It was only changed to the Salley Gardens when it was published again in 1895 in his collection, Poems. He could only remember a few lines but acknowledged his debt to the original version by calling his new poem, An Old Song Re-sung. 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.

Yeats published the poem in his collection, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889. Yeats was trying to recreate an old Irish folk song We are not told why but the presumption is that he tried to move too fast and so frightened her away. However, he вЂњwas young and foolish and with her did not agreeвЂќ. She urges him to вЂњtake love easy, as the leaves grow on the treeвЂќ. ItвЂ™s a kind of lament by a young man who meets a beautiful girl in the Salley Gardens but then loses her, presumably for failing to accept what she has to say. Ironically, considering it was written by a great poet regarded by many as a literary genius, the song is one of the simplest you will find anywhere in the Irish music repertoire. Down by the Salley Gardens, my love and I did meet W B Yeats

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