The story behind What Child Is This?
What Child Is This? is a Victorian poem on an Elizabethan melody. William Chatterton Dix, an Englishman who managed a marine insurance office in Glasgow, wrote the text about 1865 while he was recovering from a serious illness. He also wrote the Epiphany hymn As with gladness men of old. During that long convalescence he turned to the crib and asked the question that opens this carol. The child laid to rest on Mary's lap is identified at once: this is Christ the King. The tune was not new. It is Greensleeves, a English ballad melody already in print in the sixteenth century and already old enough for Shakespeare to have a character mention it in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
The pairing is the historical point. Greensleeves had lived as a love song and a dance, not as a hymn, for centuries. Putting Dix's nativity text on it is a nineteenth century decision, not a Tudor one. The fit is surprisingly good. The tune rocks, so a lullaby question feels natural, and it is also a little melancholy, so the verse about nails and spear does not arrive in the wrong color. Churches now treat words and tune as one carol. They were not born in the same century.
History and origins
Greensleeves appears in English sources from the late sixteenth century, including broadside ballads and instrumental versions. The legend that Henry VIII wrote it for Anne Boleyn is a legend, repeated because a royal author is a good story, and it is not supported by the musical evidence. The tune's form is a graceful minor melody with a refrain, easy to vary. Shakespeare expects his audience to know it, which means it was popular, not private. Over the next centuries it picked up new texts, some comic, some sentimental. None of those earlier texts is Dix's Christmas poem. When you sing What Child Is This, you are singing a ballad tune that survived long enough to be baptized.
Dix was born in Bristol in 1837 and was not a clergyman. The illness of the mid 1860s interrupted his business life and produced a cluster of hymns. What Child Is This? was later published in Christmas collections and gained its fixed partner in Greensleeves through Victorian hymnals, with harmonizations that made the old melody respectable for an organ. John Stainer and other church musicians of that generation stand in that line of arrangement. The famous Fantasia on Greensleeves by Ralph Vaughan Williams, drawn from his opera Sir John in Love, uses the same tune and is often played at Christmas because of this carol, though the fantasia itself is an orchestral piece, not a setting of Dix's poem. Hearing it, people think of the question anyway.
The text Dix wrote is in three stanzas in the form most books use. The first asks who the child is and answers with Mary, the angels, and the shepherds, then urges haste to bring him laud. The second asks why he lies in such mean estate, where ox and ass feed, and answers with the cross: nails and spear shall pierce him through. The third brings incense, gold, and myrrh, and tells peasant and king alike to own him. A lullaby that includes the passion is typical of older carols and less typical of the sweetest Victorian nursery songs. Dix was well enough to look past the crib. The mean estate is not only poverty. It is the beginning of a suffering the singer is told not to forget.
Because the tune is traditional and the words are nineteenth century, the carol has two footnotes and needs both. Calling it a medieval hymn is wrong. Calling Greensleeves a Victorian composition is wrong. The honest sentence is the one in the first line of this article: Dix, about 1865, on a sixteenth century tune. American and British congregations use that pairing as standard. Alternate tunes have been tried and have not stuck, which is a compliment to the old ballad. A minor key Christmas song stands out in a major key service, as God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen also stands out. The two are often programmed together for that contrast.
Dix lived until 1898 and saw some of his hymns become standard. He did not become a folk character. The tune's anonymity and the poem's clear authorship should both remain on the page. Choirs that add a descant are adding a third layer, modern, on top of Tudor melody and Victorian text. That stack is normal for carols. It should be described, not melted into one fake ancient origin. The question What child is this? still works in a room that has never heard of Glasgow or of a broadside. The history simply keeps the answer attached to the right centuries.
Full lyrics
Verse 1
What child is this, who, laid to rest,
On Mary's lap is sleeping,
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
Haste, haste to bring him laud,
The babe, the son of Mary.
Verse 2
Why lies he in such mean estate
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce him through,
The cross be borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The babe, the son of Mary.
Verse 3
So bring him incense, gold, and myrrh.
Come, peasant, king, to own him.
The King of kings salvation brings.
Let loving hearts enthrone him.
Raise, raise the song on high.
The virgin sings her lullaby.
Joy, joy, for Christ is born,
The babe, the son of Mary.
The text above follows a standard public domain version. Singers will meet small changes from book to book, especially in folk carols.
Lyrics presented for educational and personal use. Sing along responsibly this holiday season!
Meaning and symbolism
The question is a teaching device. Everyone in the scene already knows, and the singer wants the congregation to say the name. This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing. Mary is present as mother, not as a distant symbol. The haste to bring him laud means praise is the proper hurry, not anxiety. The carol's first meaning is identification. The child is not a generic baby of winter. He is the King in a poor place, and the poor place does not cancel the title.
The second stanza is the symbol system. Mean estate, ox and ass, then nails and spear, the cross borne for me and for you, the Word made flesh. Dix folds Good Friday into Christmas Eve so the lullaby cannot become escape. The third stanza brings the magi's gifts and then democratizes them: peasant and king are both told to enthrone him in loving hearts. The King of kings salvation brings is the summary. Greensleeves, having once been a love song, now carries a different beloved. That change is the Victorian part of the meaning. The melody is old. The direction of love has been rewritten toward the child and, explicitly, toward the cross.
Fun facts and statistics
- William Chatterton Dix wrote the text about 1865 while recovering from illness.
- He was a Glasgow marine insurance manager, not a clergyman, and he also wrote As with gladness men of old.
- The tune is Greensleeves, an English melody from the sixteenth century.
- The story that Henry VIII composed Greensleeves is a legend without solid musical evidence.
- Shakespeare mentions Greensleeves in The Merry Wives of Windsor, a sign the tune was already widely known.
- The Christmas pairing of Dix's words and Greensleeves is Victorian, not Tudor.
- The second stanza looks ahead to nails and spear, so the carol includes the cross.
Top 5 most popular renditions
Julie Andrews
1975
Julie Andrews recorded What Child Is This? on The Secret of Christmas in 1975, with Ian Fraser arranging and conducting. Greensleeves suits a voice that can keep a question intimate and a refrain clear. Andrews lets on Mary's lap is sleeping stay gentle, and she does not dodge the identification, this is Christ the King. Fraser's setting respects the minor tune instead of forcing it into a bright medley. The track sits among other traditional carols on the album, which is the right company for a Victorian text on an older melody. Listeners hear both the lullaby and the hymn. The nails and spear, if the full text is sung, keep the performance from floating away into mere prettiness, and Andrews's diction makes those hard nouns audible.
Julie Andrews
Arthur Fiedler
1970
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops played Greensleeves in their Christmas concert repertory, including the fantasia on the tune associated with What Child Is This on albums such as A Christmas Festival. An orchestra can state the sixteenth century melody so clearly that the audience supplies Dix's question without a printed page. That is fame of a particular kind. The minor tune, given pops color and a singing string line, still sounds like a lullaby rather than a battle piece. Fiedler's approach does not replace the carol with a new song. It shows how Greensleeves carried Christmas meaning in the twentieth century because of the Victorian words attached to it. Hearers who know only the instrumental version are one stanza away from the child, the king, and the cross.
Arthur Fiedler
Joan Baez
1966
Joan Baez recorded a program of traditional Christmas songs on her 1966 album Noel, and Greensleeves material such as What Child Is This belongs to the folk repertory she was bringing back to listeners who knew the tune from school. Her plain voice and acoustic setting return the melody toward ballad singing, which is historically right for a tune that lived on broadsides before it lived in hymnals. The question can sound like a real question in that style, not like a choral fanfare. Baez's Christmas record treated old carols as folk songs with authors and histories, not as background. Dix's refrain, this is Christ the King, still lands as doctrine. The performance reminds guitarists that they can accompany this carol without pretending it is a new composition.
Joan Baez
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
1960s
The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, has sung What Child Is This to Greensleeves in the chapel acoustic that flatters a minor lullaby. Treble voices ask the question, and the lower parts answer with Christ the King, a natural division of Dix's refrain. Recordings and Christmas Eve broadcasts from the mid century onward fixed that sound for listeners who think of English carols as boy choir music. The tune's Tudor age and the text's Victorian age are both at home in a college that sings centuries side by side. The mean estate verse, with ox and ass, gains a strange grandeur when the chapel reverberation holds the last chord. The carol does not need that grandeur, but it can bear it. The child remains the son of Mary.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
Mannheim Steamroller
1984
Chip Davis and Mannheim Steamroller built their 1984 album Christmas around traditional melodies recast with contemporary instruments, and Greensleeves is exactly the sort of tune that project was made to carry. A synthesized or acoustic statement of the old ballad still signals What Child Is This to anyone who learned the question in church. The risk, as with any instrumental carol, is the loss of nails, spear, and King. The benefit is a new generation hearing the sixteenth century shape as living December music rather than as a museum document. Davis did not write a substitute poem. He used a public domain melody whose Christmas identity Dix had established about 1865. The child in the title remains the reason the tune appears on a Christmas album at all.
Mannheim Steamroller
Sheet music
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Notes for singers
If you place What Child Is This? in a December service, a school program, or a living room sing, teach Greensleeves before you add harmony. A confident melody lets guests enter on the refrain. Say the names when you introduce it. The words are credited to William Chatterton Dix, and the music to Traditional. The year to remember is about 1865, and the place to name is England.
This sits in the library as a sacred carol. Let that tradition set the tempo. A lullaby loses its point if it is hurried. A dance carol loses its point if every syllable is precious. Leave a breath at the end of the verse so the next line feels chosen rather than chased.
William Chatterton Dix wrote the text about 1865 while recovering from illness. Hold that fact in the introduction you speak, not only in a program note. He was a Glasgow marine insurance manager, not a clergyman, and he also wrote As with gladness men of old. Those two details give a listener a reason to hear the song as a made thing, not as wallpaper.
When the group is small, one voice can carry the verse and everyone can take the refrain. When the group is a choir, decide in advance whether you are telling a story or painting a picture. Story songs want clear words. Picture songs can bloom. What Child Is This? will tell you which it is after a single unaccompanied read through.
Questions readers ask
William Chatterton Dix wrote the words about 1865 while he was recovering from a serious illness. He worked in marine insurance in Glasgow and also wrote As with gladness men of old. He did not write the tune. The melody is Greensleeves, a traditional English ballad tune from the sixteenth century. The Christmas carol is the Victorian joining of those two things. If a book credits the whole piece to an anonymous medieval poet, it is collapsing two histories into one.
That story is a legend. It is often told, and it is not supported by solid evidence from the music of his reign. Greensleeves shows up in late sixteenth century sources as a popular tune, and Shakespeare mentions it in The Merry Wives of Windsor because the audience already knew it. The tune had many texts before Dix's poem. The royal romance makes a good anecdote and a bad footnote. Credit the tradition, not the king.
Because Dix refuses to separate the crib from the cross. The second stanza asks why the king lies in a mean estate among the ox and the ass, and answers that nails and spear will pierce him and the cross will be borne for the singer. Many older carols make the same link. A performance that sings only the first question is prettier and thinner. The child is Christ the King precisely in that poor and future suffering, not in spite of a story that stops at the lullaby.
Call the tune Greensleeves, and call the text Dix's, about 1865. If an orchestra plays Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on Greensleeves, say that it is an orchestral piece on the same melody, not a setting of every verse. The distinction takes one sentence and prevents the program from inventing a single composer for a stack of centuries. Congregations can then sing the question to the tune they already hum. The history is part of the pleasure, not a delay before the pleasure.
Why this song endures
It lasts because the question is unforgettable and the tune was already unforgettable before Dix borrowed it. A good question song teaches itself. What child is this? The answer is a refrain you can harmonize. Greensleeves brings centuries of recognition even to people who cannot name a century. The combination feels inevitable, which is the sign of a successful pairing, and it is still a pairing, not a single ancient artifact. Explaining that does not weaken the spell. It makes the spell more interesting.
It also lasts because it refuses to be only a lullaby. The mean estate and the spear keep it in the company of carols that tell the truth about the child they adore. Churches that want beauty without amnesia have a short text that gives them both. Dix wrote it while ill, in the middle of an ordinary career, and the hymn outlived the insurance office. The tune outlived the Tudor broadsides. Together they remain one of the few Christmas pieces in a minor key that a crowd will start singing as soon as the first four notes sound.