Who is greensleeves in the song

Notable among the very first depictions of the lute is the illustration of a musician playing at a chess game in the literary work Libro de Juegos or the Book of Games, which was commissioned by Alphonso Xin in Legendary composers, such as Francesco da Milano and John Dowland, played the lute to mesmerize and amaze their audiences with the profound depth in their compositions. The lute attained maximum prominence and fame in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

So, we can imagine the lute having continued to entertain audiences through Greensleeves. It was during this period when notated music became the custom, as opposed to the fashion for improvisation, which was prevalent before. Greensleeves , being a song of yearning and unrequited desires, goes along well with the beautiful notes of the lute. Greensleeves , with its presence today, in the 21 st century, has lasted for more than years or even more in various literature and references.

Very interesting article. I learned this song quite young from my mother, from whom I learned to love folk songs of every kind. She told me that she thought it was about Queen Elizabeth I and that indeed the green stains of grass from amorous affections were the greensleeves of the title. I am looking forward to reading the true story of the song in parts 2 and 3 of this article.

Thank you for the insight into this old and beloved folk song! Those amorous grass stains seem to get everywhere! Thank you for your appreciation, Cynthia. I hope you enjoy parts 2 and 3. Extraordinary research. Perhaps someone has an answer for this question: I read a couple of years ago of a musicologist from a mid-western college Wayne State perhaps who had an attribution that portions of Greensleeves may have had their origin in Italy.

Furthermore, that when it was somehow carried to England, sung on the street and altered until it became the music that we hear today. Hello, R. Mason, and thank you for posting. What you suggest is sort of true. The melody itself is English. An analogy would be the chord structure of blues, over which various melodies can be laid. It was sung on the street, as the earliest evidence for it is as a broadside ballad, but the version sung today is no different to the earliest examples we have.

They always mention it as a myth or a legend. It is often repeated as fact. I have seen it on websites, heard it in discussion, seen it in school text books! I would think a Scot is most likey the author if it is indeed some word play of gaelic and english. Super interesting tune, and the mystery of the origin is fascinating imo. There really is no mystery to the origin of Greensleeves.

It was a broadside ballad, like thousands of others, written by one of the ballad-mongers paid to churn them out, some of them very talented at doing so.

There is absolutely no evidence for an Irish or Scottish origin for Greensleeves. There is no macaronic text of Greensleeves indicating a Gaelic spelling of any word, not a single example of a macaronic song entirely in one language except for a single word in another, and no indication that the song, first published as a broadside ballad in England, has Gaelic origins.

Some of us are just interested in the possible origins of the song whether they be historically provable or not. I would have thought you to be one of us going by the fact you have wrote an article about such theories! Also, to say that there is no mystery to the origins of greensleves is to do your own blog post discredit. Of course there is mystery to the origin of it. The mystery is not with the first known publication of the lyrics or music. Of course, like you suggest, this is a wild goosechase but that is the fun part for many people.

No one is trying to take Greensleeves away from you or claim that the Greensleeves we know and love today is not an English song. But people are interested in how such a song could have came to be. Not defensive at all. I have nothing to defend. Where is the evidence of the previous supposedly unpublished song? Where is the evidence that any broadside ever lifted its chorus from an unpublished song? Could you give any evidence that Greensleeves has a previous form and that this was the subject?

That is unexceptional, and there is no mystery there. We could make up all sorts of theories about the origins of the song, based on fantasy and baseless speculation. If, however, you have data or evidence to back up your speculation in relation to Greensleeves, please give references. Is it possible to consider the greensleeves song as a popular remake of an older ballad by which lady Green Sleeves is meant as a real harvest queen, a kind of fairy who cannot be pleased by human treasures?

The green gown could be in fact like the green man, an appearance of the pagan pure nature. There is no mention of fairies or any form of the supernatural in the song. The green man was an invention of Lady Raglan in the 20th century. More properly called foliate heads, they are not pagan, but a Christian symbol of the shortness of life i.

Greensleeves-Thrilled to know that my love of this ballad was one of following my passion and appreciation of the art of music. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email. The remarkable longevity of a 16 th century song and tune Greensleeves , composed anonymously in , is a song which has been a magnet for fanciful claims. Anything claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence In the mid s, when the price of microwave ovens had fallen to the point that they were a viable buy for the domestic kitchen and had become the latest de rigueur technology, there was a spate of oft-repeated stories about pet owners drying their dog or cat by placing it inside a microwave, with the inevitable result of the poor pet being cooked from the inside, often garnished with the detail of an exploded pooch or moggy.

Right: Late Elizabethan portrait of Anne Boleyn, possibly from a lost original of — Greensleeves myth 2: the meaning of green The idea is that the very name Greensleeves shows her to be an amorous romper in the grass at the very least and, at worst, a prostitute.

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Become an FT subscriber Make informed decisions with the FT Keep abreast of significant corporate, financial and political developments around the world. Choose your subscription. It was already a registered piece of music by but the song is believed to have been originally created well before that.

The composition of greensleeves is one of the key factors which makes the song and tune very unique. It contributed significantly to the immediate popularity of the song in England. The song is composed in the ground of romanesca in the reprise. This style of composition uses sequences of four chords which are repeated with the help of a simple bass and ultimately, the tune keeps changing around this basic structure.

Alternatively, it has been speculated that the song actually incorporated Andalusian progression in verses and a passamezzo antico in its reprise. What is known for sure is that the original greensleeves song was not in sync with the prevalent English music of the 16th century, and its origins could be traced back to either Spanish or Italian music. Since the origin of greensleeves is a fairly disputed fact, historical sources shed some light on it. According to these sources, the ballad composition of the tune was first registered by Richard Jones in Within days of his registering the tune, a number of other individuals also registered ballads with similar music and lyrics.