This song is nearly two centuries old. Its title was mentioned as one of a number of “Christmas carols” in a book titled Ancient Mysteries Explained by a political satirist and bookseller named William Hone. In 1817 he was prosecuted, ostensibly for harming public morals; in actually he’d ridiculed several government ministers and the Crown and its government weren’t pleased. He was acquitted in several landmark cases establishing expanded press freedoms in Britain.

Ancient Mysteries was the second of two books which compiled material Hone had gathered that was incidental to his trial defense, material which was not widely known.