• The Christmas carol "What Child Is This?" is sung to the tune of "Greensleeves."
• "What Child Is This?" is a song about the birth of Christ, while "Greensleeves" is a love ballad.
• "Greensleeves" also includes subtly salacious lyrics.
Most Christmas carol enthusiasts have listened to "What Child Is This?" at some point.
Like all Christmas carols, it focuses on a major event from the Christmas story; namely, shepherds coming to visit the newborn Jesus. But the lyrics dealing with the birth of Jesus were added to the melody centuries after the song's tune was written around 1580.
The originally melody — "Greensleeves" — isn't religious in nature at all. In fact, it's all about a painful romantic conundrum and includes what some historians view as subtly salacious lyrics.
Popular legend attributes it to Henry VIII, who is said to have written it for Anne Boleyn — the woman he would ultimately marry and execute. But in "Angel Song: Medieval English Music in History," author Lisa Colton writes that this association is "erroneous," as the song most likely originated during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
The lyrics deal with a spurned lover accusing Lady Greensleeves of casting him off "discourteously," despite the fact that he loved her, paid for her lodgings, and bought her a petticoat, a pearl-bedecked gown, and a jeweled necklace.
The song's scandalous twist is hidden in its very title.
Green wasn't necessarily an innocuous color in early modern English society. According to "Women's Roles in the Renaissance," the phrase a "green gown" denoted promiscuous behavior — namely, getting grass stains on your dress while engaging in amorous activities outdoors.
Authors Meg Brown and Kari McBride speculate the term "Greensleeves" may even refer to a prostitute.
But the exact meaning of the song has been debated for centuries. In "Roll Me in Your Arms: Unprintable Ozark Folksongs and Folklore," Vance Randolph suggests the singer might have assumed Lady Greensleeves was a prostitute, given her green dress. According to this school of thought, the singer was mistaken and Lady Greensleeves took offense at his assumption.
Regardless, the song was immensely popular. William Shakespeare even has Falstaff name drop the tune in "The Merry Wives of Windsor": "Let the sky rain potatoes! Let it thunder to the tune of 'Greensleeves'!"
The melody proved enduring. People even began adding their own words to the song.
English insurance company manager William Chatterton Dix wrote one such set of lyrics while undergoing a spiritual awakening in 1865. He scribbled out a poem called "The Manger Throne" while he recovered from a near fatal illness and a bout of depression, according to the Hymns and Carols of Christmas.
But "What Child Is This?" wasn't born until 1871, several years after Dix's death.
Sir John Stainer — the composer behind the modern arrangements of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "Good King Wenceslas" — got a hold of a few of the poem's verses, according to Song Facts.
He cobbled those together, slapped them onto the tune of "Greensleeves," and created a classic Christmas carol with a rather unusual history.
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