I have loved 'Greensleeves' since I was a child. Not only is it a beautiful, haunting tune, it also raised the suspense in several detective TV shows back in the 1980s and combined my love of mystery and the Tudors. In one, playing the tune made an old organ reveal a drawer containing Anne Boleyn's ring. In another, it was the notes on paper that provided the vital clue.
When I first heard 'Greensleeves', I was told it was written by King Henry VIII for his love, Anne Boleyn. When I got older, I found out that was a myth. The lyrics were by King Henry, I was told, but the tune was a medieval ballad. That rang true to Henry's personality. He was an average musician, not a brilliant one, so it made sense to me that he would borrow a tune and make up some very sentimental lyrics, then take credit for the whole thing.
But then it turned out that I was wrong again, as I found out while watching the Greensleeves Project. A team of historians and musicians combined food history, music history and the history of fashion to re-create the song in a music video form. It's both amazing and really quite funny, but it threw me for a loop. They claim that both tune and lyrics were from the 1580s, when they were registered and solidified into eighteen verses. Henry VIII died in 1547, so he had nothing to do with it.
Slightly upsetting, but anyway.
I feel obligated to point out that the registration of 'Greensleeves' in the 1580s does not mean that it was written in the 1580s. It could have been something people sang at court for years before then. The concept of ownership was different then; people tended to think that they were expressing something that had always existed, rather than claiming unique creation. Even the tune itself was influenced by an Italian style, making it a rather international effort.
So while I will concede that it was an Elizabethan rather than a Henrican creation, I cannot let go of the idea of that tune floating through the air early in Elizabeth's reign. And I'm not only saying this because 'Greensleeves' is featured in my first book, Shades of Death, which is set in 1561, and I don't like being historically inaccurate. I do truly think that the lady Greensleeves, whoever she was, has been part of Tudor history for a very long time.
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