"For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" is a popular song that is sung to congratulate a person on a significant event, such as a

promotion Promotion may refer to: Marketing * Promotion (marketing), one of the four marketing mix elements, comprising any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or i ...

, a

birthday A birthday is the anniversary of the birth of a person, or figuratively of an institution. Birthdays of people are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with birthday gifts, birthday cards, a birthday party, or a rite of passage. Many relig ...

, a

wedding A wedding is a ceremony where two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes. Most wedding ceremonies involve an exchange of marriage vo ...

(or playing a major part in a wedding), a

retirement Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours or workload. Many people choose to retire when they are elderly or incapable of doing their j ...

, a

wedding anniversary A wedding anniversary is the anniversary of the date a wedding took place. Couples may take the occasion to celebrate their relationship, either privately or with a larger party. Special celebrations and gifts are often given for particular an ...

, the

birth Birth is the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring, also referred to in technical contexts as parturition. In mammals, the process is initiated by hormones which cause the muscular walls of the uterus to contract, expelling the f ...

of a child, or the winning of a

championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this system ...

sporting event. The melody originates from the French song " Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre" ("Marlborough Has Left for the War").

History

The tune is of French origin and dates at least from the 18th century. Allegedly it was composed the night after the

Battle of Malplaquet The Battle of Malplaquet took place on 11 September 1709 during the War of the Spanish Succession and was fought between a French army commanded by the Duke of Villars and a Grand Alliance force under the Duke of Marlborough. In one of the blo ...

in 1709. It became a French folk tune and was popularised by

Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child a ...

after she heard one of her maids singing it. The melody became so popular in France that it was used to represent the French defeat in

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

's composition ''

Wellington's Victory ''Wellington's Victory'', or the ''Battle of Vitoria'' (also called the ''Battle Symphony''; in German: ''Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria''), Op. 91, is a 15-minute-long orchestral work composed by Ludwig van Beethoven to comm ...

'', Op. 91, written in 1813. The melody also became widely popular in the United Kingdom. By the mid-19th century it was being sung with the words "For he's a jolly good fellow", often at all-male social gatherings, and "For she's a jolly good fellow", often at all-female social gatherings. By 1862, it was already familiar in America. The British and the American versions of the lyrics differ. "And so say all of us" is typically British, while "which nobody can deny" is regarded as the American version, but "which nobody can deny" has been used by non-American writers, including

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

in ''

Household Words ''Household Words'' was an English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens in the 1850s. It took its name from the line in Shakespeare's ''Henry V'': "Familiar in his mouth as household words." History During the planning stages, titles origi ...

'',

Hugh Stowell Brown Hugh Stowell Brown (10 August 1823 – 24 February 1886) was a Manx Christian minister and renowned preacher. Hugh Stowell Brown was a preacher, pastor and social reformer in Liverpool in the nineteenth century. His public lectures and work am ...

in ''Lectures to the Men of Liverpool'' and

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

in ''

Finnegans Wake ''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction whi ...

''. (In the short story "The Dead" from ''

Dubliners ''Dubliners'' is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. It presents a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were writt ...

'', Joyce has a version that goes, "For they are jolly gay fellows..." with a refrain between verses of "Unless he tells a lie".)

Text

As with many songs that use gender-specific pronouns, the song can be altered to agree with the gender of the intended recipient.Originally the song was associated with after-dinner drinking by all-male groups and not used for females. In 1856, British officers in the

Crimea Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...

mistakenly sang it after a toast had been made, in Russian, to the Empress of Russia: "...peals of laughter followed when they all learned the subject of the toast, which was afterwards drunk again with due honour and respect." ''

Blackwood's Magazine ''Blackwood's Magazine'' was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the ''Edinburgh Monthly Magazine''. The first number appeared in April 1817 ...

'', vol. 80, October 1856 If the song is being sung to two or more people, it is altered to use plurals.

British version

American version

Melody

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References

External links

"For He's a Jolly Good Fellow"
text and sound,

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) conducts research into the effects of the environment on human disease, as one of the 27 institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is located in the Rese ...

{{authority control 1709 songs 1700s neologisms English folk songs English children's songs Traditional children's songs War of the Spanish Succession Quotations from music