"Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms" is a popular folk song of early 19th century Ireland and America. Irish poet Thomas Moore wrote the words to a traditional Irish air in 1808. His lyrics are as follows:
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The tune to which Moore set his words is a traditional Irish air, first printed in a London songbook in 1775.[1] It is occasionally wrongly credited to Sir William Davenant, whose older collection of tunes may have been the source for later publishers, including a collection titled General Collection of Ancient Irish Music, compiled by Edward Bunting in 1796. Sir John Andrew Stevenson has been credited as responsible for the music for Moore's setting.[2]
It is said that after Thomas Moore's wife contracted smallpox, she refused to let herself be seen by anyone, even her husband, due to the disfiguring effects of the disease to the skin on her body, and because she believed he could not love her after her face had been so badly scarred. Despairing at her confinement, Moore composed the lyrics of this song to reassure her that he would always love her regardless of her appearance. He wrote later that after hearing him sing to her from outside her bedroom door, she finally allowed him inside and fell into his arms, her confidence restored.
Other than "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms", the tune is perhaps best known as the melody to Fair Harvard, the alma mater of Harvard University. A seventeenth-century folk song, Matthew Locke's "My Lodging is in the Cold, Cold Ground", was set to this tune some time after its original setting to a different, also traditional, air.[3] Simone Mantia, a pioneer of American euphonium music, composed a theme and variations on the melody, which remains a staple of the solo euphonium literature.
The tune also appears in the 1944 Private snafu short "Booby Traps", the 1951 Merrie Melodies animated cartoon Ballot Box Bunny, and the 1957 short Show Biz Bugs, 1965 Road Runner cartoon Rushing Roulette, and Slappy Squirrel's 1993 introductory episode, "Slappy Goes Walnuts", from Animaniacs. In its cartoon appearances, the song is often the cue for a classic "bomb gag" wherein the playing of the first line of the song sets off a rigged explosion on the final note. The gag is so well-known that it is often called "The Xylophone gag.