 The first line of the carol is "This is the truth sent from above".Cecil Sharp collected an eight stanza version of the carol from a Mr. Seth Vandrell and Mr. Samuel Bradley of Donninglon Wood in Shropshire, although Sharp notes that a longer version existed in a locally printed carol book.Ralph Vaughan Williams obtained a different, Dorian mode version of the carol at King's Pyon, Herefordshire in July 1909 with help from Ella Mary Leather, the Herefordshire folklorist who had first collected it from the local oral tradition.