Far Above Cayuga's Waters

"Far Above Cayuga's Waters" is Cornell University's alma mater. The lyrics were composed c. 1870 by roommates Archibald Croswell Weeks, 1872, and Wilmot Moses Smith, 1874, and set to the tune of "Annie Lisle", a popular 1857 ballad by H. S. Thompson about a heroine dying of tuberculosis.

This song is one of the better known alma maters in the United States. It is the only alma mater song included in Ronald Herder's 500 Best-Loved Song Lyrics. In a novel, Betty Smith called it "the saddest and oldest of all college songs".Edward Abbey, in One Life at a Time, Please, mentions a campfire sing in which he contributed "the first line of the only Ivy League song that occurred to me: 'Far above Cayuga's waters . . .'".

The tune has been appropriated since by dozens of universities, colleges, high schools, and camps worldwide. For example, Professor George Penny of the University of Kansas wrote his school's alma mater by changing a few words from Cornell's song ("Far above the golden valley..."). Other colleges and universities that have used the same tune include Michigan State College, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, the College of William and Mary, the Colorado State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Florida A&M University, Syracuse University, the University of Missouri, the University of Georgia, the University of Alabama, Indiana University, Wofford College, Ripon College, Birmingham-Southern College, Emory University, Erskine College, Lehigh University, Lewis & Clark College, Moravian College, Xavier University, Acadia University, Salem College, Swarthmore College, Vanderbilt University, Howard Payne University, the American University of Beirut, and even the fictional Plainfield Teacher's College. It is the tune of the camp song of Boy Scout Camp Tesomas near Rhinelander, Wisconsin and Camp Minsi in Pocono Summit, Pennsylvania. It is the tune of the school song of fictional Anarene High School in The Last Picture Show.

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