George Martin Lane

In 1851, he received his doctorate at Göttingen for his dissertation Smyrnaeorum Res Gestae et Antiquitates and upon returning to America was appointed university professor of Latin at Harvard College.

He wrote English light verse with humor and fluency, and two of his efforts, "Jonah" or "In the Black Whale at Ascalon" and "The Ballad of the Lone Fish Ball", became famous as songs after being set to music.

According to Morgan, the song is based upon an actual experience of Lane's at a restaurant in Boston, although the reality involved a half-portion of macaroni, rather than a fish ball.

After becoming popular among Harvard undergraduates, it was translated into a mock Italian operetta, Il Pesceballo, by faculty members Francis James Child, James Russell Lowell and John Knowles Paine, set to a pastiche of grand opera music and performed in Boston and Cambridge to raise funds for the Union Army.

[1] Over the years, it was recorded by Candy Candido, the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Jimmy Savo,[4] Lightnin' Hopkins, Lonnie Donegan, Dave Van Ronk, Ry Cooder, Washboard Jungle, Tom Paxton, Shinehead, Ann Rabson, Calvin Russell, Josh White, among others.