Roses of Picardy is a popular British song with lyrics by Frederick Weatherly and music by Haydn Wood. Published in London in 1916 by Chappell & Co, it was one of the most famous songs of the First World War
One of the most famous songs of the First World War, Roses of Picardy has been recorded frequently up to the present day. The lyricist Fred Weatherly had become impressed with beauty of the voice of the soprano Elsie Griffin, who later became a leading artiste with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Her singing of his compositions resulted in his writing two of the most popular hits of the 20th-century Danny Boy (1910) and Roses of Picardy. The composer Haydn Wood wrote the music for over 200 ballads, of which Roses of Picardy became his most popular. Wood related that the melody came to him as he was going home one night on the top of a London bus. He jumped off the bus and wrote down the refrain on an old envelope while standing under a street-lamp. The exact story that lies behind the words of the song is unclear, but in his 1926 memoirs, Weatherly suggested that it concerned a love affair of one of his close friends. Picardy is in the North of France near the Channel, the site of battles during the Hundred Years’ War and mentioned in Shakepeare’s history plays. In the 20th century, it was regarded as stretching from North of Noyon to Calais via the whole of the Somme department and the North of the Aisne department. During the stalemate of the Western Front during First World War, British, French and Empire troops manned the lines in central Picardy. In the summer of 1916, these troops fought the first Battle of the Somme in some of the deadliest and fiercest fighting of the war. Roses of Picardy was published and quickly became popular throughout Britain with British soldiers singing it when they were dispatched to the Front in France and Flanders. During the First World War, the sheet music for the song sold at a rate of 50,000 copies per month. Following the war, the singing of the song helped soldiers who were suffering from shell shock to regain their powers of speech.
Roses of Picardy was included on the soundtrack album of the 2015 film The Danish Girl and has been recorded by Red Nichols and his Five Pennies, Perry Como, Mario Lanza, Sidney Bechet, Frank Sinatra and June Tabor amongst many others.
