1. In a song of French origin, why does the/an English translation/interpretation have the chorus in Italian? Was there an in-between Italian form, too? The function of such quasi-macaronic mixture, as with Rosemary Clooney mixing English with French when she sang it, must be to provide an additional ersatz "Continental ethnic" rustic folksiness to the text (see the cover illustration to the sheet music, as well), unlike the bilingual Japanese interpretation or interpretations, which simply work to clarify meaning (and assert some degree of cultural hybridity and assimilation by the appropriating culture).

2. Speaking of "folklorisation" in the sense of mutation/substitution and the role of imperfect memory in oral transmission, Mrs "Florrie" Philomena Shreshtha of Ootacamund had this as part of her standard repertoire at the YWCA there in the 1970s, and a line had moved from the set text to "...as though his fingers itched", which accords with the original sense.   

3. Along the lines of appropriation of the tune for an advertisement, which is invaluable information of the sort one doesn't know till one is told: In non-negative parody (using a basic narrative for a new purpose not necessarily at odds with the oiginal), pointing to gender-differentiated roles in men's work and women's work, in a seminar in c. 1984/5 at the University of Queensland Department of English, I sang, using only the second stanza, of how, in return for doing my mending, a male "I" (egomorphism, also a feature of folktale mutation), "sewed and I stitched..." "making things oh so neat, just like magic swift and fleet" (substitutions to avoid the shoemaking), "*Then* she danced, danced, danced...", "*Now* come hear her say, as she sings it bright and gay...", "I gave her..." ---- and then what was intended to be an unexpected movement from qhat had been implied to be clothes, back to shoemaking and gender roles, "shoo-ooes to set her feet", and the interlocutor (doubling the speaker, also part of folklorisation) took up the chorus, "He gave me...shoo-oooes to set my feet a-dancing..."

Sanjay Sircar