QUICK TAKES - May 21, 2009

Christie’s auction house said Wednesday that an early Bob Dylan poem it is offering for sale June 23 was based on an existing country tune.

“Little Buddy” was “a revised version of lyrics of a Hank Snow song,” Christie’s said.

Fans of the late Canadian country singer “came out of the woodwork” to say they recognized the lyrics after the Associated Press wrote about the composition on Tuesday, said Christie’s pop culture specialist Simeon Lipman.

Dylan was 16 and still going by his given name Bob Zimmerman when he submitted “Little Buddy” in the summer of 1957 for a newspaper at a summer camp in Wisconsin.

Dylan revised the lyrics by changing some words around and adding some of his own, in effect following an old folk and country tradition.