For He's a Jolly Good Fellow

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

[3] The melody became so popular in France that it was used to represent the French defeat in Beethoven's composition Wellington's Victory, Op.

"And so say all of us" is typically British,[9] while "which nobody can deny" is regarded as the American version,[4] but the latter has been used by non-American writers, including Charles Dickens in Household Words,[10] Hugh Stowell Brown in Lectures to the Men of Liverpool[11] and James Joyce in Finnegans Wake.

[12] (In the short story "The Dead" from Dubliners, Joyce has a version that goes, "For they are jolly gay fellows..." with a refrain between verses of "Unless he tells a lie".)

The 1935 American film Ruggles of Red Gap, set in rural Washington State, ends with repeated choruses of the song, with the two variations sung alternately.