I don't know how many times I've looked at the tune Beach Spring in The Sacred Harp (see here) but I had never before noticed that the other tune on the same page, Cookham, with which I am not familiar, has "Hark! the herald angels sing" for a text.

I think everybody now sings it to Mendelssohn, but of course I knew the text predated the latter tune, it just never occurred to me to wonder what preceded it.

Are there any other well-known carols that are universally sung to a particular tune now but were once sung to a different one? Examples?

And what about "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound"? Everybody from Judy Collins on up sings it to New Britain, but the lyrics were around a good forty, fifty years before the first attestation of the tune. What did they sing it to originally? (Yeah, I know, House of the Rising Sun... ;-)

"Auld Lang Syne" is another example; my website has a MIDI of the original tune (For old long syne, my Jo) as background sound on my Auld Lang Syne in Esperanto page.

Etc. Other similar cases sought.

Liland