"The Sally Gardens (air)", in Gaelic "Na Garranta Sailí" is an "old" song, well known in South Leinster, which was set to the tune. William Butler Yeats rewrote the lyrics and published them in 1889. Yeats called the poem "An Old Song re-Sung" and later called it "Down by the Salley Gardens". It was subsequently set to music by Herbert Hughes to the traditional air "The Moorlough Shore" (also known as "The Maid on the Mourne Shore") in 1909. This is not related to the well known reel also known as "The Sally Gardens". Salley or sally comes from the Latin name ‘salix’ or ‘salyx’, meaning willow (‘aspirin’, or acetylsalicylic acid, was developed from an investigation of the folk remedy of chewing willow shoots to relieve pain), or from the Gaelic word for the plant, "sailleach” (which itself may have been derived from the Latin). "The Salley Gardens" therefore simply means willow gardens which were kept for medicinal purposes near villages and towns. It has been recorded by Peter Pears, John McCormack, Alfred Deller, Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy, James Galway and many others. I don't remember from whom I learned it.