Voice, fiddle, and flute

In the previous post, in which we (okay, I) talked about people changing words to the lyrics of songs, reader Kathy from Virginia recalled that her father-in-law used to sing "Amazing Grace" to the opening theme music from the television program Gilligan's Island. The phenomenon she mentioned is different from changing an occasional word here and there, such as the example I had pointed out, changing "flaring lamps" to "glaring lamps" in the second verse of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

But the Battle Hymn itself is an example of what Kathy was talking about. Before "Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord" and so forth were sung to the tune we all know, that very tune had a completely different set of words, "John Brown's Body Lies A-Moulding In The Grave".

Christian songwriter Dottie Rambo a few decades back put her lyrics "He Looked Beyond My Faults And Saw My Need" to the old Irish folk tune, "Danny Boy" and no one objected/cared/was any the wiser.

Even the poem by Francis Scott Key that became our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner" (which begins, "O say, can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?") is sung to an 18th-century tavern drinking-song tune called "To Anacreon, In Heaven".

I kid you not. You can listen to it right here (1:06) .

I am indebted to the simple tune of "Jesus Loves Me" for helping me and young folks everywhere remember the names of the 12 disciples of Jesus:

Let's name the twelve disciples one by one,
Peter, Andrew, James, and John,
Next come Philip, and Thomas too,
Matthew and Bartholomew.
James (the one they called the Less),
Simon, also Thaddeus.
The twelfth disciple Judas made.
Jesus was by him betrayed.

Back in my sacrilegious youth, there was a Pepsi-Cola commercial that went "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot, twelve full ounces, that's a lot, something something and something too, Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you" and some of us who ought to have known better made up new words:

Christianity hits the spot,
Twelve apostles, that's a lot,
The Holy Ghost and the Virgin too,
Christianity's the thing for you.

Well, that's more than enough of that.

What songs can you think of (excluding bawdy ones) that are sung to the tune of a different song?

P.S. -- This all seems very familiar. Perhaps I have blogged about it before.

P.P.S. -- In the comments, Yorkshire Pudding mentioned that "My Country, 'Tis Of Thee" is the same music as "God Save The Queen" and Alphie Soup mentioned that Elvis Presley's song "Love Me Tender" is the music of a 19th-century American song called "Aura Lee". These very good examples suddenly brought three others to mind:

1. The music of Della Reese's hit song "Don't You Know" is "Musetta's Waltz" from Puccini's opera La Boheme.

2. The love ballad "Full Moon and Empty Arms" from several decadea ago is music from Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

3. "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" uses music composed by Frederic Chopin in his Fantasie Impromptu.