I am glad to find such keen readers. If I had known this in advance, I would have chosen a more colourful nickname.

For those of you who have not yet analyzed the tune, I may add that it has obviously been taken from somewhere else, originally being a merry dance of 16 bars. To adapt it to those melancholic lyrics, either the unknown poet or the folk process chose to slow down the second part to half the original tempo in relation to the first one, including the (otherwise identical) yodlers. By this device, the rise of hope and subsequent disappointment in the first stanza are depicted. This is a unique phenomenon, as far as I know. The other stanzas only reluctantly fit into the schema - which, of course, can be observed in many other songs as well.

Young Gustav Mahler's composition, in contrast, completely indulges in self-pity. Love is blind but age makes wise.