We do indeed share the tune with Lithuania. It's also been used by several other countries including the USA (although I've momentarily forgotten which words they use).

And although it pains me to do this, I must support Terry Wogan - it started off that the tune was released by a brass band (Brighouse and Rastrick? It's been a long time) and played on the radio. Mr Wogan started to join in with it and some wag technician thought it would be fun to open his mike whilst he was singing. The GBP (Great British Public) being what it is, they innundated the station with requests for him to do it again and demand was such that he recorded it. Again, the GBP (fools to a man) went out and bought the record in such numbers that it became a hit.

I suspect the demand was so great because it was a folk song that was regularly taught in schools, when those things were still taught. My mother in law remembers being taught 'Blow away the morning dew' and I recently heard a woman of bus pass age comment that she learned 'Linden Lea' at school.

I have a book called 'The Community Song Book' that I "acquired" from my last school, which contains many traditional songs with the dots, which we used in Music lessons. I think that's where I first sang a recognisable folk song, although it was with 30 other girls and a mad Dutchman.

Further back than that, was 'Singing Together' - a radio for schools programme that we subscribed to. It produced song booklets (and yes, I still have one or two) and you sang along to the radio at a certain time (ours was 10.30 on Wednesday mornings), in the knowledge that children up and down the country were doing the same.

The Folk Diss award should go to the person who decided that traditional songs should not be available to schools either by changing the curricculum or by stopping the radio programmes.

LTS