The tune, "We are poor frozen-out gardeners," was collected in Kilburn in the early nineteenth-century by William Chappell, and published in his anthology The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of Olden Time (1856). He wrote: "This is the tune of many songs. If the reader should meet any half-a-dozen men perambulating the streets of London together, and singing, the probabilities are great that they sing to this tune....I recollect hearing the tune at Kilburn, full forty years ago, and have, with tolerable annual regularity, ever since. I regret never having stopped to hear the words." The tune is a variant version of "Kingsfold."
Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267–1337), "The Nativity," fresco in the Arena Chapel, Padua
