[Ads-l] "Love makes the world go 'round"

[Peter Reitan]

New York Daily Herald, December 7, 1837.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/32387361/new_york_daily_herald/

Describes it as an old French song, translated into many languages. French and English lyrics printed.

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________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Baker, John <JBAKER at STRADLEY.COM>
Sent: Friday, June 7, 2019 9:14:42 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "Love makes the world go 'round"

---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Poster:       "Baker, John" <JBAKER at STRADLEY.COM>
Subject:      Re: "Love makes the world go 'round"
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It's from an old song, "Oh, 'Tis Love."  The initial lines are "Oh! 'tis lo=
ve, 'tis love, 'tis love, That makes the world go round."  Lloyd's Song Boo=
k for 1847 gives the full text on page 59 and says it was published by Wybr=
ow, https://books.google.com/books?id=3Dji1YAAAAcAAJ.  I don't see the shee=
t music online.

It's not clear exactly when it was published, but the earliest reference I =
see is from the New-York Tribune, Dec. 28, 1843, which quotes those lines (=
except that "'tis love" is given only twice).  The lines are also quoted in=
 that form in Alice in Wonderland (1865), giving them lasting currency.

While the sheet music is not online, it does not seem to have been lost ent=
irely.  A bookseller's catalog, http://www.simonbeattie.co.uk/catalogues/ne=
w_year_miscellany.pdf, offers it with some other songs.  The catalog sugges=
ts that it is from the 1820s (which seems a bit early, considering that the=
re are a number of references to it in the 1840s but none before 1843) and =
indicates that it is adapted to C'est l'Amour.  This is presumably the song=
 quoted in The Water-Babies (1862) as "C'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour Qui =
fait la monde =E0 la ronde."  YBQ cites the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, =
which apparently dates the song to 1851, but if the song is the source for =
an English language song that existed by 1843, it must be older.


John Baker







From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of=
 Arnold M. Zwicky
Sent: Friday 7 June 2019 9:15 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "Love makes the world go 'round"

One of the many topics that went past in my blog posting yesterday:

"What makes the world go 'round?"
https://arnoldzwicky.org/2019/06/06/what-makes-the-world-go-round/<https://=
arnoldzwicky.org/2019/06/06/what-makes-the-world-go-round/>

It was used as a familiar saying already in Gilbert & Sullivan's 1882 _Iola=
nthe_, as I point out in this posting. Just idle curiosity, but is there an=
y research on the origins of the formula? (Not the general idea that love i=
s all-important, Amor Vincit Omnia and all that, but this very specific for=
m of expression of the idea.)

arnold

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