Today I’ll talk about the second song that I selected for the project. This is the ballad Greensleeves. This is an English song composed over 400 years ago. It’s one of the most famous old songs. Now it is impossible to establish who was the author of this ballad. However in 1580 several people impersonated its authors. Of course, there were several versions of it. But the option that a certain Richard Jones released under his own name in 1584 has survived to the present day. There is an opinion that in total there are 1800 verses of this song.
The ballad was very beloved, especially during the Tudor era. There is such a legend: as if the English king Henry VIII Tudor himself composed this song for his future wife Anne Boleyn. But another legend says that the song was composed during the reign of Elizabeth I, the daughter of Anne Boleyn.
The song itself tells about a man who turns to his beloved that denied him. He calls her Lady Green Sleeves. But who was this lady? Alas, we don’t know. By the way, green color meant hope in heraldry. Maybe it’s true and it was Anne Boleyn, because so many hopes of Henry VIII were connected with her...