The carol is referred to in Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Īn article in the March 1824 issue of The Gentleman's Magazine complains that, in London, no Christmas carols are heard 'excepting some croaking ballad-singer bawling out 'God rest you, merry gentlemen,' or a like doggerel'. Hone's version of the tune differs from the present melody in the third line: the full current melody was published by Chappell in 1855. It had been associated with the carol since at least the mid-18th century, when it was recorded by James Nares in a hand-written manuscript under the title 'The old Christmas Carol'. Soon after, it appeared in a parody published in 1820 by William Hone. The better-known traditional English melody is in the minor mode the earliest printed edition of the melody appears to be in a rondo arrangement for fortepiano by Samuel Wesley, which was already reviewed in 1815. Īlthough there is a second tune known as 'Cornish', in print by 1833 and referred to as “the usual version” in the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols, this version is seldom heard today. Others date it later, to the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. Some sources claim that the carol dates as far back as the 16th century. A precisely datable reference to the carol is found in the November 1764 edition of the Monthly Review. The earliest known printed edition of the carol is in a broadsheet dated to c. It contains a slightly different version of the first line from that found in later texts, with the first line 'Sit yo w merry gentlemen' (also transcribed 'Sit you merry gentlemen' and 'Sit yo u merry gentlemen'). 1827 publication of the melody, set to satirical lyrics by William HoneĪn early version of this carol is found in an anonymous manuscript, dating from the 1650s.

God bless us everyone piano latters