Green Grow the Lilacs is a folk song of Irish origin that was popular in the United States during the mid-19th century.
The song title is familiar as the source of a folk etymology for the word gringo that states that the Mexicans misheard U.S. troops singing "green grow" during the Mexican-American War.
The song appears in the 1931 play of the same name by Lynn Riggs. Green Grow the Lilacs became the basis of the libretto for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!.
The song appears in an LP album by Tony Kraber.
Read more about Green Grow The Lilacs: Versions
Famous quotes containing the words green grow the, green, grow and/or lilacs:
“Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e’er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.”
—Robert Burns (1759–1796)
“The bud of the apple is desire, the down-falling gold,
The catbird’s gobble in the morning half-awake
These are real only if I make them so. Whistle
For me, grow green for me and, as you whistle and grow green,
Intangible arrows quiver and stick in the skin
And I taste at the root of the tongue the unreal of what is real.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The flags are natures newly found.
Rifles grow sharper on the sight.
There is a rumble of autumnal marching,
From which no soft sleeve relieves us.
Fate is the present desperado.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)