Interesting historical note . . . . . .

'Long before Longfellow penned his verses about the village smithy, rural Englishmen were singing a hippety-hopping tune to the words:

Underneath the spreading chestnut tree
I loved her and she loved me.
There she used to sit upon my knee
'Neath the spreading chestnut tree.

Last year, when King George VI visited a boys' camp in England, the boys entertained him by singing it with gestures, and (before a battery of newsreel Cameras) the King himself joined in with a right royal will (see cut). Weeks later the newsreel reached a small cinema theatre at Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera.
In the audience was a jumpy, pink-eyed little Czech composer named Jaromir Weinberger, world-famed for his lilting opera Schwanda der Dudelsackpfeifer. Composer Weinberger was much struck. Said he: "I liked this whole scene very much and I said to myself: 'This is the theme for which you, Jaromir, shall write variations and a fugue.'"

From Time magazine
Monday, Oct. 23, 1939