Oh, I know it's widespread (though I wasn't aware it was that early).
What's wretched is the poetry in it, which does its best to maintain
rhyme and meter at the expense of the natural gracefulness of the
English language. In fact, I think the song was so widespread (both in
serious forms and in parody) that it may be the matrix for our
proverbial expression "innocent as babes in the woods."
Cheers, Barre Toelken
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