‘Another famous song in the repertoire of Robert Cinnamond is the one associated with our great poet W. B. Yeats. It is The Rambling Boys of Pleasure, first heard by the poet from an old woman who sang it as she sat milking her cow in a field outside the village of Ballysadare in County Sligo. The poet listened patiently to her singing and then went off and penned his famous poem, but he had the courtesy to subtitle it, An Old Song Resung’ (Paddy Tunney, Where Songs Do Thunder). 

A hand-written copy of an American version dated 1784 is now in the possession of the Baker Memorial Library at Hanover, New Hampshire (cf. Flanders & Olney, Ballads Migrant in New England,1953). In this copy the first verse reads:

It’s down in Sally’s Garden

O there hangs Rosies three

O there I met a fair maid 

who told to me her mind so free

She bids me take love easy

As leaves they do fall from the tree. 

But I being young and crazy,

Could not with her agree.

The mention of the young lady’s name, Sally, suggests that some version similar to this inspired W. B. Yeats to write An Old Song Resung, later called Down by the Salley Gardens. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that The Rambling Boys of Pleasure here given is the matrix from which Yeats’ poem eventually derived.’ (Seán O Boyle, The Irish Song Tradition)

The words and music of The Rambling Boys of Pleasure were included by Seán O Boyle in The Irish Song Tradition.