The song she asks about (number 1078 in the Roud Folk Song Index) has rarely been found in tradition; presumably its rather savage nature would have limited appeal, in the later 20th century at least. We should bear in mind, though, that strict observation of the Sabbath -and even more so, such important religious holidays as Christmas- was still common in all sectors of society when Ella Leather and Vaughan Williams were collecting; and one did not as a rule attempt to get songs on a Sunday. The great Norfolk singer, Harry Cox, was very unwilling to sing or play music on a Sunday, and he died in 1971. He wasn't very untypical.

Roud lists only three (perhaps four) examples. The earliest was printed in Alice Gillington's Songs of the Open Road in 1911 as In Dessexshire as it Befell, and was noted from "a Gypsy singer". (The text was reproduced more recently in Geoffrey Grigson, The Penguin Book of Ballads, 1975).

In 1912, Ella Leather and Ralph Vaughan Williams got a set, On Christmas Day, from Mrs. Esther Smith at Dilwyn, near Weobley in Herefordshire; that is the set for which Ed provided a link earlier. Mrs. Smith was also of Gypsy stock. Finally, Fred Hamer recorded the song in 1959 from May Bradley at Ludlow, Shropshire. She described the song as having been her mother's favourite; her mother turned out to be none other than Esther Smith. Esther wasn't particularly severe or puritanical; she also gave Vaughan Williams the quite racy Riding Down to Portsmouth, though he didn't make a note of the words.

Essentially, then, we have only two discrete versions of the song, which appears to have been found only in Gypsy tradition, though it will doubtless have been known in settled communities too at one time. Cecil Sharp noted a tune (without text) in Armscote, Warwickshire, 1910, from an unknown singer, that may belong to this song. It appears never to have been published.

As for the implicit cruelty of the narrative, we shouldn't be too surprised. Such "cautionary tales", whether religious or secular, have never been uncommon. Consider the enormously popular Struwelpeter stories, for example. The past wasn't, much of the time, a very nice place.