The song 'The Rambling Boys of Pleasure', on which W. B. Yeats is likely to have based his poem 'Down by the Salley Gardens', as sung by Robert Cinnamond from Glenavey Co. Antrim and Angelo Dornan from New Brunswick, Newfoundland.
"You Rambling' Boys of Pleasure" is likely to be a song recorded in Co. Antrim, only, as far as folk song scholars are concerned. Proinsias was particularly interested in the song and what he felt was the W.B. Yeats connection. His curiosity was further aroused when Angelo Dornan, whose ancestors had left Co Antrim for New Brunswick in 1825, came to Ireland in 1968 to search out possible Dornan relatives. Angelo sang a very full version of 'You Rambling Boys of Pleasure' for Proinsias.
Yeats himself described 'Down by the Salley Gardens' as an old song-re-sung and it is thought that he heard it performed by an old woman in the village of Ballisodare in county Sligo.
