Ok, the title is perhaps too general, this is about "The Castaway" (1993) vs. a Christmas carol from the southern French region known as Provence, sung in Provençal, a dialect from the an ancient tongue known as Occitan, itself a Romance language.

There isnt't that much of both songs which sound alike, only one measure. But the said measure contains approximately 15 notes.

The Provençal song is entitled Aquesta nuech, which means This night. Here's a sample
http://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/media/s ... Type=track
I refer to the tune between 0:01 and 0:05. I have another version of this song on a CD in which the said tune is a recurring theme.

The Amorphis song can be (re-)heard here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/media/s ... Type=track

I hear the same motive, perhaps not in ultimate pitch, but in relative pitch.

I doubt that Amorphis "borrowed" this tune from the French song. One reason being that the song is rather obscure, especially to someone living in Finland. I came across it rather fortuitously, and even in this age of google and youtube, the song is not overly popular. Perhaps Amorphis were trying to come up with something folkish, and there are some common motives and melodies in folk songs from a certain era and area, when music travelled slowly but infinitely. Or simply, there are just 12 half-tones in a key so some common patterns are bound to emerge in more than one place, over time. Or alternatively, there is a more popular folk song which sounds just like that, either Spanish, Finnish or anything else, and Amorphis heard it (if that's the case I have yet to hear it).

But still, it is not impossible that Amorphis heard Aquesta nuech somewhere and it got stuck in their heads and re-emerged in The Castaway.

I'm not quite sure what kind of discussion you're trying to prompt here. Are you trying to ask us whether or not we see the same things as you, and whether or not any of us can correlate your hunch?

An answer to a question to a non-question no one asked.

I've listened to Tales from the Thousand Lakes hundreds of times in my life and after just listening to this Christmas carol I have no idea which part of "The Castaway" is supposed to rip that off. However, someone in Youtube seems to think this part is from here.

yes, underlying collective neurophysiology + similar environmental stimuli can sometimes cause similar cognitive-behavioral-emotional-creative results

wee!

Haha, hell of a stretch, don't ya think? I honestly don't have a clue what he's talking about, either.

The melody from the very start. It's very similar but I don't know what else to say. Whether they ripped it off or not, it's just not a very interesting topic.

Well if we're talking about Amorphis borrowing parts from other songs, on their last album they musically 'paid tribute' to the song Jolene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2zcHWJdcl8

so i guess, if there's any doubt, then there's no doubt

I was not expecting any particular kind of discussion. I was expecting anything from nothing at all to opinions on whether people shared my perception or not (which does interest me; I tend to doubt my own musical perceptions), or whether the song was influenced by another folk song in particular, or musings on whether the folks elements in folk metal* tend to be global more than regional.

I like that link to I Want To Love You Tender and I would tend towards deeming this as influence, especially since the band was Finnish. Love to see stuff like this..

*(not that I would lump Amorphis in the folk metal category, but they were an early influence for the genre)

.. and it's not their last album anymore. I guess chord progressions with similar interval progressions can reveal influences, but I think they have a higher chance of being coincidences than common successive invividual notes from a melody / tune.

Definitely not as interesting as the fact that Septic Flesh's song "Communion" has the exact same chant as the Meow Mix song.

Cradle of Filth's "Dusk and Her Embrace" song does the same thing. I'd have to imagine that's some sort of fairly simple scale/progression and England and Greece just don't have Meow Mix as a brand...

Nah, they really liked the Meow Mix song. It's totally metal.

If we can extend this thread to some other instances of Amorphis sounding very similar to something else:

Sampo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXvf2UMk4AA&t=0m50s
Night In Gales, a German melodeath band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ySAc9D9n8&t=3m11s

Concerning that possible Armi & Danny influence, I just realized that Danny is the one who recorded Kuusamo in Finnish, a song which Amorphis covered. Kuusamo itself is a Finnish variant of an Italian song, for which a French song was also made.

On the broader topic, "The Brother Slayer", off an EP following the "Elegy" album, bears a vague resemblance to the Finnish folk song which features equivalent Finnish lyrics, "Veljensurmaaja":
The Brother Slayer (0:40 - ), by Amorphis (1997)
Veljensurmaaja, sung by Finnish American John Soininen (1939)
and even less to any Swedish version ("Sven i Rosengård").

However, part of the organ melody (0:13 - 0:25) is very reminescent of the main motive in the first movement of Deep Purple's "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" (1969):
The Brother Slayer (0:13-0:25), Amorphis (1997)
First Movement (0:05-0:17), Deep Purple & Orchestra (1969)