The Eton Boating Song

The "Eton Boating Song" is the best known of the school songs associated with Eton College that are sung at the end of year concert and on other important occasions. It is also played during the procession of boats. The words of the song were written by William Johnson Cory, an influential Master at the school. The melody was composed by an Old Etonian and former pupil of Cory, Captain Algernon Drummond and transcribed by T. L. Mitchell-Innes. The piano accompaniment was written by Evelyn Wodehouse. It was first performed on 4 June 1863. Ordinarily, only the first, sixth, seventh and eighth stanzas are sung. Contrary to popular belief, the "Eton Boating Song" is not the school song of Eton College, that being "Carmen Etonense".

The traditional status of Eton as the training grounds for Britain's wealthy elite endowed the song with a peculiar cultural cachet. For instance, writer George Orwell, an Old Etonian himself, wrote in his autobiographical essay "Such, Such Were the Joys" that:

From the whole decade before 1914 there seems to breathe forth a smell of the more vulgar, un-grown-up kind of luxury, a smell of brilliantine and crème-de-menthe and soft-centred chocolates — an atmosphere, as it were, of eating everlasting strawberry ices on green lawns to the tune of the Eton Boating Song.

In 1939 the tune (at a quicker than usual tempo) was used as the theme for the film A Yank at Eton. In the 1960s, the tune was adopted by Coventry City as their club anthem. The lyrics were rewritten by Jimmy Hill and Derrick Robbins in order to be relevant to the club, and the song is still regularly sung by City fans today. In his appearance on Inside The Actor's Studio, Hugh Laurie, an Old Etonian, sang, with great embarrassment, the first verse of the "Eton Boating Song". He also dryly commented on the homoeroticism that can be read into the phrase 'With your bodies between your knees.'

The song appears in the 1951 comedy film The Lavender Hill Mob, sung by the schoolgirls during the school scene.

...
Wikipedia