The Irish love song Down by the Salley Gardens sounds like it has come straight out of the folk music tradition but in fact it was written by the classically educated poet W B Yeats.

The song is a tale of unrequited love in which the young man pursues a girl he meets while out walking. He manages to establish a relationship with her temporarily but then he loses her because he ignores her pleas to "take love slowly".

He effectively frightens her away and is left to regret his haste and his foolishness.

Yeats originally wrote the lyrics in the late 1880s and they weren’t put to music until 1909 when the composer Herbert Hughes added them to the tune of the Irish folk song, The Maids of Mourne.

This gave the words a new lease of life as the song became an instant hit and is still popular today. It has been performed by artists all over the world, even in Asian countries like South Korea which have no direct cultural connection with Ireland.

It was perhaps ironic that Yeats poem should have found greater fame as a song because it was based on an Irish traditional air that he heard an old woman singing in county Sligo in Ireland. Yeats was very young at the time and could only remember a few lines.

He was also unable to recall the name of the original song but research has shown that it was almost certainly the old Irish folk tune, The Rambling Boys of Pleasure. It refers to the Salley Gardens and has two lines which are virtually identical to the Yeats version.

She said to take love easy as the leaves grow on the tree

But I was young and foolish and with her did not agree.

Yeats acknowledged his debt to this song by originally calling his poem, An Old Song Re-sung, when it was first published in 1889.

However, once it was put to music and started to become popular it quickly became known as Down By the Salley Gardens and the original title is now largely forgotten.

Incidentally, salley comes from a Gaelic word meaning willow. Willow branches were used to thatch roofs so many villages kept small plantations of willow trees which were known as salley gardens.

Down by the Salley Gardens often became popular as a meeting place for lovers.