page_title: Silver Threads Among the Gold
section_title: Related to the song
hierarchical_section_title: Silver Threads Among the Gold / Related to the song
caption_attribution_description: English: sv:Emil Norlander (1865-1935), Swedish journalist, songwriter and writer and producer of revues; seen here bying his "glögg" (traditional Swedish en:mulled wine) for the Christmas of 1916.
context_page_description: "Silver Threads Among the Gold", first copyrighted in 1873, was a popular song in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today it is a standard of barbershop quartet singing. The lyrics are by Eben E. Rexford, and the music by Hart Pease Danks.
context_section_description: In the late 19th century Eben Rexford wrote a number of stories published in the magazine Girls of Today, a Beadle and Adams publication. In 1876, three years after the publication of the song, Mattie Dyers Britts published a story in Girls of Today entitled “Silver Threads Among the Gold.”
  The metaphor of silver threads was used in an Italian song of the time, “Threads of Silver,” but the theme of that song is quite different from the theme of “Silver Threads Among the Gold.” In the Italian song, “Each thread of silver is a love once vainly plighted, . . . Each an illusion blighted, . . . Fated dreams undone.”
  The Swedish journalist and revue producer Emil Norlander (1865–1935) wrote Swedish lyrics to Danks's melody in the early 20th century. Norlander's version has no contextual similarity to that of Rexford and is instead an appeal for peace. It is titled "Varför skola mänskor strida?" (Why should people fight?) and has remained popular in Sweden to the present, having been recorded by several well-known artists.
  There were also Norwegian versions of the Rexford–Danks song that were popular in Norway and America. In 1919 Carsten Woll recorded a translation, Sommersol til siste stund. About twenty-five years later Ernest and Clarence Iverson recorded "Ungdoms mynder", which had the same melody but lyrics unrelated to the original song.
  The melody accompanies German lyrics describing the blossoming of love for an Alpine dairy maid in the song "Das Alpenrosenlied", by the German pop and volksmusician Heino, on the 1975 album Seine großen Erfolge 5.
  The song was parodied as "In the Boarding House":
  In the boarding house where I live,
  Ev'rything is growing old,
  Silver threads are on the butter,
  All the bread is growing mould;
  When the dog died,
  We had hotdogs,
  When the cat died,
  Catnip tea,
  When the landlord died I left there,
  Spareribs were too much for me.
  chorus [as above]
caption: Emil Norlander
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