A Friday Poem (no science involved)

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A Friday Poem (no science involved)

August 11, 2006

It’s Friday and I feel a poem coming on.

Down By The Salley Gardens
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.
William Butler Yeats, Crossways 1889.
Salley is an anglicanization of saileach, gaelic for the willow tree.

Comments (2)

ArtK

August 11, 2006 at 4:54 pm | #1

Quote

Thanks for the explanation of “Salley.” I’ve often wondered about it. I was just listening to an old recording of Tommy Makem singing this one. He intersperses the singing with reciting A. E. Houseman’s “When I was one and twenty.”

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

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.’
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

The combination is very effective.
JohnnieCanuck

August 12, 2006 at 1:20 am | #2

Quote

I’d be surprised if salley and sailech were not derived from the latin salix.
The M-W dictionary traces salicylic acid back to the french salicylique and salicin to salix. ASA was originally derived from willow bark.

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