Somebody has been reading Barry Callaghan's Hardcore English, I suspect.

Barry didn't say where he got that idea, and sadly I can't ask him now. I certainly would have; that title has been nagging me for years, and I had assumed that it was a corruption of 'The Iron League', under which name the tune has also been found. In the couple of years since I last looked into it, quite a bit of new information seems to have appeared, though; and it may well be that the connection with Guiseppe Grimaldi has a good basis. Joseph Grimaldi's Memoirs (largely ghosted by Dickens, it appears) would be a good place to start.