Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

For the past couple of hours, I have had a song stuck in my head that's in a language I don't speak. But that's not the annoying part; it's that I only know the chorus, so it's "sing chorus / hum verse / sing chorus / hum verse / sing chorus / hum jazz variation on verse / sing chorus / hum funk variation on verse / sing chorus / hum newage variation on verse ..." ad nauseum (and yes, the language in question is Latin, and yes, did that on purpose).

Fortunately, it's a very well known song, so Googling the lyrics will be quite easy. But memorizing them will have to wait until I'm not busy shuffling computer equipment around the first floor.

Though it does occur to me that maybe the reason I got the words of the chorus so firmly stuck in my head is that they're pretty darned transparent to an English-speaker who doesn't know Latin (er ... after someone else provides the translation of the one unobvious word, which is also the only word in the title, that is). That's not true of the verses. And by now I figure most of you have already narrowed your guesses down to one song, probably correctly.

Actually, this is better than what was looping through my brain before it. You see, I'd heard one too many commercials using "The Twelve Days of Christmas" as a melody, and some part of my, I dunno, cerebellum or cortex or something, decided to stage a revolt. So I started thinking things like,

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me ...
       Wait a minute, you never came home on the seventh day!
I didn't?
               No, she's right, you didn't.
On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love said to me:
        You're drunk, you're drunk, you silly old fool, as drunk as drunk can be...

Which when I pondered just how evil it was, morphed into:

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love said to me,
"What are these four strange calling-birds where Tweety used to be?"
I said, "You're drunk, you're drunk ..." etc.

So now that I've ruined that for you, I'll show mercy and put that other tune, the one I started off rambling about, back into your heads instead. [Wanders off, singing.]

Gaudete, Gaudete, Christus est natus
Ex Maria Virgine, Gaudete!
Dee dee dee dee da da dum
Da da dee dee dee dum
Dee dee da da do do dum
Da da dee dee dee dum...

"Reached by telephone at NBC yesterday, Mr. O'Brien said he was stunned and overwhelmed by the viewers' response to what had initially been a throwaway line, and by what that response, collectively, suggested about how the digital world was affecting traditional media like television.

" 'We couldn't have done this two years ago, three years ago,' Mr. O'Brien said. 'It's sort of this weird comedy dialogue with the audience.' "

-- from "So This Manatee Walks Into the Internet", by Jacques Steinberg in The New York Times, 2006-12-12, about Internet response to mention of an initially fictitious (but created by airtime) web site, www.hornymanatee.com on the television show Late Night With Conan O'Brien (NBC)

[Thanks to vvalkyri for pointing it out.]