No "History"; just a folk tale. It was being sung in Melbourne in the late 60s, much the same as recorded later by Steeleye Span and, possibly, brought from the same source as theirs. When Steeleye Span performed in Canberra in '76 they sang it as their 'unaccompanied' item; I hadn't heard it for some years and was so carried away I joined in. Their mixer, stationed about 8m away, got rather agitated searching his desk for the channel he couldn't control but nobody else seemed to notice.
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