I have a tape of carols by Johnny Coppin, called "A Country Christmas". One of the tracks, collected from Esther Smith at Dilwyn near Weobley in Herefordshire by Ella Mary Leather and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and published in 1920 in their "Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire", is a very miserable piece indeed, and I would like to know more about the society in which it arose.
The plot is basically that a farmer goes ploughing on Christmas Day, and is met by Jesus, who asks why he is doing so. The farmer answers that he needs to in order that his family may be fed, whereupon Jesus strikes him dead, leading to dire consequences for the family. (I'll try and do a transcription later, if no one else has the words more easily available.)
Does anyone have any idea as to the origins of this merry piece - the sort of people who make a big issue of not working on Christmas Day seem to be those unlikely to make or sing carols, even miserable ones? Compared with songs which bring God out on the side of the ploughman against his master, or against situations which compel the lower strata of society to work at unsocial times, this seems to stick out like a sore thumb from the folk tradition.

Penny