say, may I thee offer), is one of the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's best-known and best-loved songs,[1] from his 1790 collection, Fredman's Epistles, where it is No.

A pastorale, it depicts the Rococo muse Ulla Winblad, as the narrator offers her "reddest strawberries in milk and wine" in the Djurgården countryside north of Stockholm.

Pastoral dedicerad till Herr Assessor Lundström" (To Ulla in the window in Fiskartorpet at lunchtime one summer's day.

The serenade form was popular at the time, as seen in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni; Bellman has shifted the setting from evening to midday.

In each verse, Fredman speaks to Ulla, describing his love through delicious food and drink; in the refrain, he softly encourages her to admire nature all around, and she replies with a few meditative words.

[6] The epistles, written and performed in different styles, from drinking songs and laments to pastorales, paint a complex picture of the life of the city during the 18th century.

A frequent theme is the demimonde, with Fredman's cheerfully drunk Order of Bacchus,[7] a loose company of ragged men who favour strong drink and prostitutes.

At the same time as depicting this realist side of life, Bellman creates a rococo picture, full of classical allusion, following the French post-Baroque poets.

The women, including the beautiful Ulla Winblad, are "nymphs", while Neptune's festive troop of followers and sea-creatures sport in Stockholm's waters.

It is "spaciously Mozartian", with da capos at the end of each verse creating yet more space, before a sudden switch to a minor key for the chorus.

[11] Bellman's song about Haga, "Porten med blommor ett Tempel bebådar" ("The gate with flowers heralds a temple") is set to the same tune.

It is dedicated to the assessor and member of Par Bricole, Carl Jacob Lundström, who helped find enough subscribers to finance the publication of Fredman's Epistles.

[15] The song imagines the Fredman/Bellman narrator, seated on horseback outside Ulla Winblad's window at Fiskartorpet on a fine summer's day.

Dörrarna öpnas af vädren med våda, Blommor och Granris vällukt ger; Duggande Skyar de Solen bebåda, Som du ser.

Truly the flood-gates of heaven are broken — Rich is the scent of flower and tree — Drizzling, the clouds now the sun but foretoken, Thou may'st see.

Here the rows of tree-trunks stretching proudly down In brand-new gown; There the quiet reaches Of the inlet flow; And off yonder mid the ditches Ploughed land, lo!

See from their hinges thy portals nigh broken Scarce can the flowery breeze resist; Show'rs in the heavens new sunshine foretoken As thou seest.

[12] These epistles incorporate, in his view, an element of parody and anti-pastoral grotesque, but this is dominated by a strong genuine pleasure in "the beauty of summer nature and the delights of country life".

Fredman can, he writes, be supposed to have spent the night with Ulla after an evening of celebration; now he sits on his horse outside her window and sings to her.

[12] Charles Wharton Stork's 1917 anthology calls Bellman a "master of improvisation"[b][21] who "reconciles the opposing elements of style and substance, of form and fire ... we witness the life of Stockholm [including] various idyllic excursions [like Epistle 71] into the neighboring parks and villages.

"[22] Hendrik Willem van Loon's 1939 introduction and sampler names Bellman "the last of the Troubadours, the man who was able to pour all of life into his songs".

Epistle 71 has been recorded by the stage actor Mikael Samuelsson (Sjunger Fredmans Epistlar, Polydor, 1990),[24] the singers and by the noted Bellman interpreters Cornelis Vreeswijk, Evert Taube[25] and Peter Ekberg Pelz.