Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms

Thomas Moore’s song of constancy, published in 1808 in A Selection of Irish Melodies, set to the air “My Lodging Is on the Cold Ground.” That melody was in print in England by 1775 and carried several earlier lyrics, including the Scottish “I Lo’e Na a Laddie but Ane”; England, Scotland, and Ireland have all claimed it. A popular story holds that Moore wrote the words to reassure his wife after smallpox scarred her face, though the tale is not well documented. The melody leads a double life in America as “Fair Harvard,” Harvard’s alma mater since 1836, and turns up as the opening violin quotation in Dexys Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen.” Session players know it as a waltz, and English country musicians Walter and Daisy Bulwer with Billy Cooper recorded it on English Country Music (Topic, recorded 1962).