"The worms they crept in"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I disagree that the resemblance between the tunes is "flimsy,"  and am optimistic that a more sophisticated analysis, which nobody has done, least of all me, would bear me out.

Besides, even if the musical resemblance is "flimsy," there remains the fact that there IS a resemblance, combined with the remarkable fact that Gounod's piece is a "funeral march" and the folksong is about worms creeping in and out of dead bodies.
Coincidence?  I wouldn't bet on it.

While not pretending to be a musicologist,  I do have an extensive familiarity with American folk airs, built up over decades. The only other tune that comes to mind (non-folk) which is at all similar is the "Laurel & Hardy" theme, whose title I can't recall.  Maybe that was inspired by the tune of "The Hearse Song" or of "The Funeral March" or both or some other tune.  All three bear some resemblance.

Few facts about the folk song are available. It antedates publication in Sandburg in the year 1927; fragments and variations of it were extremely well known among American children as late as the 1960s.

The decades-long gap between Gounod's composition and the first known printing of the song makes a prima facie case that Gounod came first.

Again, as usual, one awaits further information.


"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: "The worms they crept in"
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On Sep 19, 2004, at 11:15 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Must be you haven't listened to the tunes ["The Hearse Song" and
> Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette"] lately.

actually, i've been listening to them quite a lot these days!

> Cf. the opening of the Gounod piece with "The Hearse Song" in
> Sandburg (1927), p. 444. The folk version is simplified and tending
> toward the major

(yes, though the tune i remember, and the one i find on the web
easily, is straightforwardly minor.)

the first musical phrase has do as the first accented note, and it ends
with ti-do-re; this is nothing more than a movement from tonic to
dominant. the two tunes can both be beaten in good ol' 4/4 (though
gounod set his in 6/8). the one notable thing they share is the dotted
rhythm on that ti-do-re figure. it seems to me that that's not enough
to make the tunes *obviously* related. (i'm not saying they aren't;
i'm just saying that the evidence is flimsy.)

> but so unlike other American folk tunes as to eliminate any remaining
> doubt.

what's the basis for this judgment? do you have an extensive knowledge
of the character of American folk tunes that would allow you to make
this judgment?

there are scholars who study the "families" of folk tunes and of hymn
tunes (these are often related). is there any actual scholarship on
the matter?

in any case, there's a straightforward historical question here, having
to do with when the "Hearse Song" tune is first attested, in
relationship to the composition date of gounod's piece. without some
first knowledge about that, we could maintain that gounod's tune is an
art-form version of the folk tune! (i believe that the borrowing of
tunes is more often from folk song to art-form composition than the
reverse.) or, of course, that they are independent creations, using
very common musical materials. (i'd guess that gounod's intent was to
write something "simple" in character.)

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)


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