One of the beauties of spiral galaxies is bursts of blue-and-red hydrogen light from newly-born clusters of stars.  In the 19th century a poetically similar outburst of creativity occurred in Naples, which not only transformed Italian popular music, but propelled by recordings of Enrico Caruso and Mario Lanza among others, has since warmed hearts across the globe.

La Canzone Napoletana is understood to have taken off in 1835 with the song Te voglio bbene assaie by Raffaele Sacco (1787 –1872), who as well as being a poet was also an inventor of optical instruments.  The particular song I am focusing on today is Vieni sul mar* by Aniello Califano (1870-1919).  I cannot date it precisely, but let us, for purposes of argument, date it to 1900.  The refrain goes:

Italian	English Translation	English song to same tune
Vieni sul mar Vieni a vogar, Sentirai l’ebbrezza Del tuo marinar!	Come to the sea Come rowing You will feel the thrill Of your sailor man.	Two lovely black eyes Oh, what a surprise! Only for telling a man he was wrong Two lovely black eyes.

Alas, I am not a fluent speaker or reader of languages (some may say that includes English!) but being a reluctant traveller, learning songs in the languages of Europe and sometimes beyond is my form of linguistic tourism.  To help me, I sometimes put the words through Google Translate, and then sort out the inconsistencies.  Taking the words of the present song, I did this to
and got

But you sleep and [do] not think about your own credit limit,
but [he does] not sleep who lives with love;

Che colpo!  It is clear enough what has happened here.  “Fido” originally meant “faithful one”, and in Italy and Britain it is still a well-known name for a dog.  Well known in America also, as a certain cartoon from the New Yorker illustrates: