Throwback Thursday: Green Grow the Lilacs (pretty soon, anyway)
A Gringo looks at "Green Grow the Lilacs"
It’s March 19 and I think Old Man Winter went out for a pack of cigarettes and ain’t coming back for a long time. At least here in Santa Fe.
Tomorrow is officially the first day of spring, but it’s been mostly warm and sunny since mid-late February here. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing my afternoon walks mostly in gym shorts and usually with no jacket.
As God intended.
I’ve seen some red red robbins bob bob bobbin’ and apple blossoms blooming everywhere.
And soon, in the next month or so, Santa Fe’s lilacs should be sparkling with dew — though in reality most of this Enchanted Land doesn’t get that much dew.
According to a 2021 article in The Santa Fe New Mexican, “Lilacs typically bloom in May, provided there is not a prolonged freeze, and the flowers can last until June.”
And when that happens, it always reminds me of this song:
Chorus: Green grow the lilacs, all sparkling with dew
I’m lonely, my darling, since parting with you;
But by our next meeting I’ll hope to prove true
And change the green lilacs to the Red, White and Blue.
I once had a sweetheart, but now I have none
She’s gone and she’s left me, I care not for one
Since she’s gone and left me, contented I’ll be,
For she loves another one better than me. …
Yep, “Green Grow the Lilacs.” What a song!
I believe I first heard as a teenager on a 1959 album in my Mom’s collection, Love Is a Gentle Thing.
Back then, the music I preferred was closer to Steppenwolf, Creedence and Zappa.
That’s still true.
But, this syrupy, orchestrated version by Harry Belafonte probably is the first one I ever heard and it’s the one I love the most. (Even though, for the most part, I’m more wild about Harry’s calypso pop.)
I didn’t realize it until years after I heard this version, but Belafonte’s “Lilacs” is very different than most versions as far as the lyrics go. For instance, his entire last verse won’t be found on any other version I’ve heard :
They say that it’s best to forget what we had
Than it is to remember and always be said
But still I keep wondering each now and then
If ever I’ll see you and kiss you again …
This is the doing of songwriter Fred Brooks — a pen name for Fred Hellerman, (1927-2016), who probably best is known as a member of The Weavers, those ur-folkies of the 1950s. Hellerman also wrote “I’m Just A Country Boy,” a sad song recorded by Sam Cooke, Don Williams, The Band and others. Hellerman also produced Arlo Guthrie’s album Alice’s Restaurant.
Also, even beyond the words, Belafonte’s slow arrangement is actually gut-wrenchingly sad. As he sings “Springtime is here and it’s here without you,” the heartbreak is contagious.
But long before Harry Belafonte, folks were lamenting lost sweethearts by singing “Green Grow the Lilacs.”
Basically, it’s an old folk tune from the British Isles, which started out as a very similar song about a different plant: “Green Grow the Laurels.”
According to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, “The first known occurrence of the song was in a late 18th century broadside by London printer J. Evans, in business from 1780 to 1812.”
This, of course is just the first time the lyrics were printed. It’s probable that it had been sung by the folks for a long time before that.
Steve Roud and Julia Bishop, in The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, note that there is a lot of confusion about the use of colors in the lyrics:
Many versions of this song have the line “Change the green laurel for the orange and blue,” which leads some writers to assume an Irish political origin. But in the same place, others have “violet so blue,” or even “bonnets so blue.”
This would apply to the “Lilacs” version as well. The line “change the green lilacs for the red, white and blue” could make a contemporary listener wonder, “Who wrote this? Lee Greenwood???!!?”
As Alan Lomax, discussing the substitution of the American “red, white and blue” for the Irish “orange and blue,” wrote in his book The Folk Songs of North America (1975):
In such fashion do people emend their folk songs, as they pass from generation to generation, each one struggling to re-interpret lost meanings by the substitution of a word here and there."
Lomax even emended the word “amend” to make his point.
One little myth that ought to be cleared up: My mom told me that the word “gringo” came from a misunderstanding over the title of “Green Grow the Lilacs.”
She wasn’t alone in believing that.
Lomax himself helped propagate this in his above-cited book:
The refrain was so much sung by the Irish-American troops who marched into Mexico during the 1846-48 war that Mexicans thenceforth called Americans “gringos” (from `green grows’) …
But could Lomax and my mom be wrong?
Most contemporary sources say yes.
Sorry, Mom!
Author Hugh Rawson wrote in a 2005 column for American Heritage:
Putting the kibosh on the fanciful theories of amateur etymologists was the discovery that gringo had existed in Spanish for many years before the Mexican War. The earliest-known example is from the Diccionario Castellano (1786–93), by P. Esteban de Terreros y Pando. Gringo , according to the Diccionario , was applied in Málaga and Madrid to “foreigners who have a certain type of accent which keeps them from speaking Spanish easily and naturally.”
The term almost certainly derives from griego, Spanish for Greek. In its (rather late) first appearance in the Real Academia Española’s official Spanish dictionary, in 1869, “to speak in gringo ” is recorded as meaning “to speak in Greek,” or to speak unintelligibly, just as we may say in English when bewildered by what someone is saying, “It’s Greek to me.”
So enough etymology. Let’s have some more music!
The first recorded version of “Green Grow the Lilacs” was was by a singer (and actor and director) named Tony Kraber. Here’s his version
Singer/actor Gordon MacRae also did a version, his in 1957 on an album called Cowboy's Lament.
In 1955 MacRae starred in the film version of Oklahoma!, which was based on a 1931 play by playwright — and proud Okie — Lynn Riggs. Riggs’ play was titled Green Grow the Lilacs.
The website of The Museum of the City of New York describes the play:
The curtain rises on a young cowboy in love. The audience first sees him on his way to visit the object of his affection, the lovely Laurey who lives with her elderly aunt. The time is about 1900, the place is a territory out west soon to become a state. The cowboy courts Laurey, but she, confused by her feelings, rejects his invitation to a local party. Instead she accepts the company of Jeeter Fry, the somewhat unsavory man who runs her aunt’s farm. Curly, our lonesome cowboy, finds solace singing the old folk song “Green Grow the Lilacs.”…
Of course, the play and the movie Oklahoma! didn’t use “Lilacs” or any other old folk songs. Instead they used songs by a couple of nobodies, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.
But, back to “Lilacs,” this version, by The Maddox Brothers & Rose, is more my speed:
Other country stars, including Tex Ritter and Johnny Cash, also recorded “Lilacs.”
And though I don’t personally like The Chad Mitchell Trio’s version as much as most the others mentioned here, I’ll include it here just because the lyrics are different than the traditional ones
And just for the heck of it, here’s “Green Grows the Laurel,” performed by Greg Brown:
It should be mentioned that there’s also an old British folk song called “Green Grow the Rushes,’ which seems to be religious in nature, sometimes even titled “The Twelve Prophets.” This honestly doesn’t resemble the “Lilacs” and “Laurels” song
But to complicate things, there’s a 1783 Robert Burns poem called “Green Grow the Rashes O.” (Medical tip: If your rashes turn green CALL YOUR DOCTOR!) It doesn’t have much in common with “Green Grow the Lilacs,” but I do like this version by Ewan MacColl:
So enjoy the spring. The lilacs will be here soon!
For more deep dives into songs, check out The Stephen W. Terrell Web Log Songbook
Lilac buds are busting out all over in "The Big Duke City!