ADS-L Digest - 27 Feb 2009 to 28 Feb 2009 (#2009-60)

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:23 PM -0500 3/2/09, Ann Burlingham wrote:
>On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Your Name <ROSESKES at aol.com> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Your Name <ROSESKES at AOL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: ADS-L Digest - 27 Feb 2009 to 28 Feb 2009 (#2009-60)
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  In a message dated 3/1/2009 12:01:34 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
>>  LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU writes:
>>
>>  I hope I  will be forgiven exploiting the general knowledgeability of people
>>  on this  list with a query that has virtually no relevance to
>>linguistics.  I
>>  recently read that the lyrics of Leonard Cohen's 1967 song
>>"Suzanne" appeared
>>   earlier as a poem in a 1966 book of his.  Are there other examples of
>>  well-known song lyrics that appeared earlier as poems?  I am not
>>talking  about
>>  well-known poems that were also made into songs, but rather about
>>texts  that are
>>  usually thought of as songs but were actually first  poems.
>
>"Morning has broken" by Eleanor Farjeon became a song by Cat Stevens.
>
Well yes, but it was a song by others decades before that.  I
remember hearing an old version on some folk recording or other
before the Cat Stevens version, and I see from the wiki entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Has_Broken that it was actually
a Christian hymn.  In fact according to this entry Farjeon wrote the
words to fit a pre-existing "Gaelic tune" which I assume (although
the description here isn't definitive) is the same tune (but not the
same arrangement) as in the Stevens recording.

LH

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