"Kashmiri Song" or "Pale Hands I Loved" is a 1902 song by Amy Woodforde-Finden based on a poem by Laurence Hope, pseudonym of Violet Nicolson.
The poem first appeared in Hope's first collection of poems, The Garden of Kama (1901), also known as India's Love Lyrics.
The following year, when Amy Woodforde-Finden set to music Four Indian Love Lyrics, "Kashmiri Song" emerged as the most popular, quickly becoming a drawing room standard and remaining popular until the Second World War. [1]
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The phrase "beside the Shalimar" presumably refers to one of two Shalimar Gardens, the Shalimar Gardens in Srinagar or the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore. Although the former seems the likelier identification, given the song's title, the fact that Nicolson lived in Lahore gives some weight to the latter.
There have been numerous recordings of the song, including:
Among famous singers to record the song in the inter-war years, there are 3 versions by Peter Dawson, two by Frank Titterton, and single versions by John McCormack and Richard Tauber.
The song has led an unusually varied life particularly in the field of popular culture. Some of the places where the song/poem is mentioned or quoted are:
Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella, known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,The Sheik,Blood and Sand,The Eagle, and The Son of the Sheik.
Sheik or Sheikh, literally "elder" in Arabic, is the honorific title for the ruler of a tribe.
Peter Smith Dawson was an Australian bass-baritone and songwriter in the 1920s and 1930s, when he was possibly the most popular singer of that era. He said that at the time the gramophone was "an instrument of torture", excruciating for the recording artist, who needed "lungs of leather" to make an impression on the wax cylinders, which captured nothing but the very loudest noises.
Amy Woodforde-Finden was a composer who is best known for writing the music to "Kashmiri Song" from Four Indian Love Lyrics by Laurence Hope.
Harum Scarum is a 1965 American musical comedy film starring Elvis Presley. It was shot on the original Cecil B. DeMille set from the film The King of Kings, with additional footage shot on location at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Los Angeles. Some of the film was based on Rudolph Valentino's 1921 movie The Sheik.
The Sheik is a 1921 American silent romantic drama film produced by Famous Players–Lasky, directed by George Melford, starring Rudolph Valentino and Agnes Ayres, and featuring Adolphe Menjou. It was based on the bestselling 1919 romance novel of the same name by Edith Maude Hull and was adapted for the screen by Monte M. Katterjohn. The film was a box-office hit and helped propel Valentino to stardom.
"Aura Lea" is an American Civil War song about a maiden. It was written by W. W. Fosdick (lyrics) and George R. Poulton (music). The melody was used in Elvis Presley's 1956 hit song "Love Me Tender".
Shalimar the Clown is a 2005 novel by Salman Rushdie. The novel took Rushdie four years to write, and was initially published on 6 September 2005 by Jonathan Cape. Shalimar the Clown derives its name from Shalimar Gardens, in the vicinity of Srinagar. Srinagar is one of several Mughal Gardens, which were laid out in several parts of undivided India when the Mughals reigned over the subcontinent. Shalimar is also the name of one of the characters featured in the novel. Shalimar the Clown won the 2005 Vodafone Crossword Book Award and was one of the finalists for the 2005 Whitbread Book Awards.
Shalimar Bagh is a Mughal garden in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India, linked through a channel to the northeast of Dal Lake. It is also known as Shalimar Gardens, Farah Baksh, and Faiz Baksh. The other famous shoreline garden in the vicinity is Nishat Bagh, 'The Garden of Delight'. The Bagh was built by Mughal Emperor Jahangir in 1619. The Bagh is considered the high point of Mughal horticulture. It is now a public park and also referred to as the "Crown of Srinagar".
Violet Nicolson, otherwise known as Adela Florence Nicolson, was an English poet who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope. In the early 1900s, she became a best-selling author.
The Garden of Kama is a book of lyric poetry published in 1901 and written by Adela Florence Nicolson under the pseudonym Laurence Hope. It was illustrated by Byam Shaw. The poems in the book were given as translations of Indian poets by a man, as she thought the book would receive much more attention than it would likely have done if she had published it under her own name.
Kashmiri may refer to:
Hampsthwaite is a large village and civil parish in Nidderdale in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, England. It lies on the south bank of the River Nidd 5 miles (8 km) north west of Harrogate. In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 1,083.
Shalimar or Shalamar refers to three historic royal gardens of the Mughal Empire in South Asia:
"Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes" is a popular old song, the lyrics of which are the poem "To Celia" by the English playwright Ben Jonson, first published in 1616.
"The Sheik of Araby" is a song that was written in 1921 by Harry B. Smith and Francis Wheeler, with music by Ted Snyder. It was composed in response to the popularity of the Rudolph Valentino feature film The Sheik.
The Pageant of Empire was the name given to various historical pageants celebrating the British Empire which were held in Britain during the early twentieth century. For example, there was a small Pageant of Empire at the town of Builth Wells in 1909. In 1911 a giant Pageant of Empire took place at the Festival of Empire at the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, where thousands of amateur performers acted out historical scenes. The most notable was the Pageant of Empire which took place in London in 1924.
Shalimar is a perfume originally created by Jacques Guerlain in 1921 for French perfume and cosmetics house Guerlain. In production continuously since 1925, Shalimar is currently a flagship product for Guerlain.
Hakim Ahmad Shuja MBE, was a famous Urdu and Persian poet, playwright, writer, film writer and lyricist, scholar and mystic, from former British India, later Pakistan.
Anna Karenina is a 1920 German silent historical film, directed by Frederic Zelnik and starring Lya Mara, Johannes Riemann, and Heinrich Peer. It is an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1877 novel Anna Karenina. It premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin.
