Greensleeves
Artist: Izzy / Brothers Fours / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Alas, my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously
And I have loved you so long
Delighting in your company
I have been ready at your hand
to grant whatever you would crave;
I have both wagered life and land
Your love and good will for to have
I bought the kerchers to thy head
That were wrought fine and gallantly
I kept thee both at board and bed
Which cost my purse well favouredly.
Chorus
Greensleeves was all my joy
Greensleeves was my delight
Greensleeves was my heart of gold
And who but my Lady Greensleeves?
I bought thee petticoats of the best,
the cloth so fine as fine might be:
I gave thee jewels for thy chest,
and all this cost I spent on thee.
Well, I will pray to God on hie,
that thou my constancy maist see:
And that yet once before I die,
thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.
Chorus
Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu!
God I pray to prosper thee;
For I am still thy lover true
Come once again and love me.
Chorus
Who but my Lady Greensleeves?
Greensleeves
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song and tune, a ground of the form called a romanesca.
A broadside ballad by this name was registered at the London Stationer's Company in 1580[1] as "A New Northern Dittye of the Lady Greene Sleeves". It then appears in the surviving A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584) as "A New Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Green Sleeves. To the new tune of Green sleeves."
The tune is found in several late 16th century and early 17th century sources, such as Ballet's MS Lute Book and Het Luitboek van Thysius, as well as various manuscripts preserved in the Cambridge University libraries.
Greensleeves and Henry VIII
There is a persistent belief that Greensleeves was composed by Henry VIII for his lover and future queen consort Anne Boleyn. Boleyn allegedly rejected King Henry's attempts to seduce her and this rejection may be referred to in the song when the writer's love "cast me off discourteously". However, Henry did not compose "Greensleeves", which is probably Elizabethan in origin and is based on an Italian style of composition that did not reach England until after his death.
Lyrical interpretation
Wikisource has lyrics for the song: GreensleevesOne possible interpretation of the lyrics is that Lady Green Sleeves was a promiscuous young woman and perhaps a prostitute.[3] At the time, the word "green" had sexual connotations, most notably in the phrase "a green gown", a reference to the way that grass stains might be seen on a lady's dress if she had made love outside.[4]
An alternative explanation is that Lady Green Sleeves was, as a result of her attire, incorrectly assumed to be immoral. Her "discourteous" rejection of the singer's advances supports the contention that she is not.[4]
In Nevill Coghill's translation of The Canterbury Tales,[5] he explains that "green [for Chaucer’s age] was the colour of lightness in love. This is echoed in 'Greensleeves is my delight' and elsewhere."
Alternative lyrics
The hymn What Child Is This? by William Chatterton Dix, set to the "Greensleeves" tune, is used across the Western Christian Church.
A variation was used extensively in the 1962 film How the West Was Won as the song "Home in the Meadow", lyrics by Sammy Cahn, performed by Debbie Reynolds.[6]
Early literary references
In Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, written around 1602, the character Mistress Ford refers twice without any explanation to the tune of "Greensleeves" and Falstaff later exclaims:
Let the sky rain potatoes! Let it thunder to the tune of 'Greensleeves'!
These allusions indicate that the song was already well known at that time.
