The melody, later also known as "Ballo di Mantova" and "Aria di Mantova", gained a wide popularity in Renaissance Europe, being recorded variously as the Flemish "Ik zag Cecilia komen", the Polish "Pod Krakowem", the Romanian "Carul cu boi", the Scottish "My mistress is prettie", and the Ukrainian "Kateryna Kucheryava".
"La Mantovana" appears in Il Scolaro ("The Schoolboy") by Gasparo Zanetti (1645),[2] as "Ballo di Mantova" in Duo tessuti con diversi solfeggiamenti, scherzi, perfidie et oblighi by Giuseppe Giamberti (1657) and as "An Italian Rant" in John Playford's The Dancing Master (3rd edition, 1665).
Samuel Cohen, a nineteenth-century Jewish settler in Ottoman Palestine (now, Israel) who was born in Moldavia, adapted a Romanian variation of "La Mantovana" – "Carul cu boi" – to set Naftali Herz Imber's poem, "Hatikvah"; which later became the Israeli national anthem.
[6][7] Another, similar Romanian folk song, "Cucuruz cu frunza-n sus", is also based on "La Mantovana".
Harken Zephyrus who invites you, and the earth that marries the sky; may May come at its ray, come with your lap full of beautiful blossoms, come on the wings of little Zephyrs.