Traditional Folk Songs Of Many Nations

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	52	For he's a jolly good fellow. or We wont go home until morning.



	The longevity of some folk-Bongs and their strange metamorphoses can scarcely be exaggerated. The well-known bacchanalian melody sung in England to the words of "He's a jolly good fellow" and in Amer�ica to "We won't go home till morning," has the most variegated history of them all. Beginning in the Holy Land as a song in praise of a French crusader who lost his life near Jerusalem, the Chanson de Mambron took such strong root in the Orient that the melody is sung to-day in some parts of Egypt and Arabia, where they mistakenly claim it to be an old Egyptian folk-tune. The Mambron. altered by a French queen into Malbrooke, gave rise to Malbrooke s'en va-t-en Guerre, which foik-song was used by no less a composer than Beethoven, in an orchestral work_The Battle of Vittoria. Crossing the channel, and after�wards the ocean, the song of the old crusader became the carol of the modern rollicker. 14842