The Doris Day recording of "A Guy Is a Guy" came out in 1951, when I was three years old. Until the A Knave Is a Knave thread, I didn't know that "guy" started life as a folk song (well, maybe it wasn't "folk" when iut started, but you know what I mean...). The 1952 Doris Day recording of Sugarbush is another, created by Josef Marais by combining Dutch and African songs. Fireship was another, titled "One of the Roving Kind." Iko Iko is another, which made the charts more recently.

Are there others we can add to this list? I'm not talking about the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary songs that were billed as folk songs and hit the charts. I'm talking about ones where there's an element of surprise that the song had far older roots.

-Joe-