Project 6: Down By the Salley Gardens

Lyrics:

Oh 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 I did not agree.

In a field down by the river, my love and I did stand
An on my leaning shoulder, she placed her snow-white hand.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree,
But I being young and foolish, and now I am full of tears.

Oh 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 I did not agree.


I find it very interesting that this ballad, like all other folk songs, traveled by mouth and therefore deviated from the original source. The original source is William Butler Yeats' poem with the same title. However, upon further research, I found that Yeats had based his writings on what he remembered from another song that an old lady sang in a village. Yeats had originally named his poem: "An Old Song Re-Sung." But this begs the question of where that old lady got it from -- had she written it? Or had she learned it from her father, friend, just by chance? This got me thinking about if ideas are ever really new -- when ideas come to us, inspiration for that had probably come from something else. There must be a source, but how do we know exactly what that source is? In today's world, especially, we are already surrounded by so many types of media, technologies, sounds and sights; how do we know if an idea is truly ours? Our "new" ideas are a combination of what we already know and our current worldview, facts and pre-existing ideas lightly filtered through our own minds. Intellectual property and intellectual copyright is very hard to pinpoint and justify, if it can be pinpointed at all.

I appreciated that the reading (Mike Yates on Cecil Sharp) created a sort of a timeline or diary, if you will; I found it much easier to understand the course of events. It is very impressive that Cecil took on such a big project, almost by himself, getting sponsorships, getting sick, yet still continuing on his mission. Just the passion behind that is monumental, but his contribution to American music is even greater. One of the lines that caught my attention was: "the cult of singing traditional songs is far more alive than it is in England." In today's context, cult immediately brings up cult films and cult TV shows with strong fan bases and followings. Cult is a strong word, but also fitting for the tight group of musicians from the Appalachians who preserved these traditional songs. I also thought the age gap between the English versus American singers was interesting -- in England, the singers were elderly, while American singers could have been as young as 15. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that the tradition was more "alive" in America.