I first encountered this song as one of the traditional songs in the old BBC Radio schools' series Singing Together. As fas as I remember, no provenance was given. The opening chorus sung by primary age kids was thus: Let every good fellow now pick up his glass Vive la compagnie And drink to the health of our glorious class Vive la compagnie The chorus turned up together with 2 lines of a totally different song as a fragment for a starter choir begun recently in my part of the UK. I am trying to find out in which book the tutor found it. Onto 2 totally different verse lines, the chorus was rejigged, plus the rhythm of one line changed to: Viva la, viva la, Viva l'amour Viva la, viva la, Viva l'amour Viva la, viva la, Viva l'amour Viva la companie. The new spelling is as per the book. My own hunch is to set it as an upper class drinking song of the early 19th C but have no evidence whatsoever. Nice to see it being discussed, though.
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