The Holly and the Ivy
Wassail track 6
This tune was recorded by Peter Kennedy in the 1950s, from Peter Jones of Bromsash in Herefordshire. The Kennedy recording was included on the sixties LP Songs of Ceremony (part of the Caedmon / Topic Folk Songs of Britain series) and has become the standard version on the folk scene - unlike in church, where the carol is almost invariably sung to the tune which Cecil Sharp collected in 1909 from Mrs Mary Clayton at Chipping Camden in Gloucestershire, and which was included in the Oxford Book of Carols.