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.
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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."
The combination is very effective.
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.