"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 September 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.
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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, because "Greensleeves" is probably Elizabethan in origin and is based on an Italian style of composition that did not reach England until after his death, Henry almost certainly did not compose it.[2]
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Greensleeves
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One 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 woman's dress if she had engaged in sexual intercourse out-of-doors.[4]
An alternative explanation is that Lady Green Sleeves was, through her costume, 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."
"What Child Is This?" is a popular Christmas carol written in 1865 by William Chatterton Dix, set to the "Greensleeves" tune.
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]
"Stay Away" is the theme of the 1968 film Stay Away, Joe performed by Elvis Presley set to the "Greensleeves" tune.
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:
These allusions indicate that the song was already well known at that time.
The earliest known source of the tune (Trinity College, Dublin ms. D. I. 21, c. 1580 - known as "William Ballet's lute book") gives the tune in the melodic minor scale. "Greensleeves" is also often played in a natural minor scale and sometimes in the Dorian mode. Although the above printed example is printed with E naturals, the recording features E-flats, thus making it a hybrid of natural minor and harmonic minor.
Act 2 Scene 1 of Ferruccio Busoni's opera Turandot opens with the tune.
Gustav Holst's Second Suite in F for Military Band incorporates the tune in its final movement; he used the same music, slightly re-scored, in the final movement of his St Paul's Suite.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) composed an orchestral piece in 1934 entitled Fantasia on "Greensleeves", in which the tune of Greensleeves alternates with that of Lovely Joan.
Jacques Brel's well-known song "Amsterdam" is a modified version of the tune.[7]
On Jazz singer Beverly Kenney's 1956 LP Beverly Kenney Sings For Johnny Smith, I'll Know My Love is based on the song's tune.
Alfred Reed arranged the tune for orchestra in 1962. Then, in 1986, he revised his previous arrangement, and arranged the piece for concert band, and then again in 1993. Alfred Reed's 1993 piece 'Greensleeves' is played by many concert bands worldwide, as well as many school bands.
For several seasons the opening and ending theme of the television series Lassie was an arrangement by Nathan Scott of the traditional folk tune.
Steve Lukather covered the song in his Santamental album.
Leonard Cohen's song "Leaving Greensleeves" (1974)[8] is another modified version of the tune.
Vanessa Carlton covered the song for Christmas time.
Loreena McKennitt also covered the song for her album The Visit (1991).
Saxophonist John Coltrane performed a jazz arrangement of "Greensleeves" on his album Africa/Brass.
Organist and composer David Briggs has wrote the "Variations on Greensleeves" for organ (2005)