I suspect that the "bright-eyed girl" line belongs to a pop song that I used to hear on the radio, maybe in the late 1940s. It had the same tune, pretty much, but was a sappy love song, and the rhythm was changed, so that all the syncopations were collected in a bunch. The song soon disappeared, but the changed rhythm infected the way people sang the original song. Pissed me off.

About 1960, at Harvard Hillel House, I heard the song sung in Hebrew. Turn about is fair play. "Lo yilmedu od milhama" fits the tune pretty well, anyway.