Here's something interesting from the site Hymns and Carols of Christmas:

"This happy 15th or 16th century Latin carol is probably a parody of an earlier medieval song beginning 'intonent hodie voces ecclesie' in honour of St Nicholas, the patron saint of Russia, sailors and children - to whom he traditionally brings gifts on his feast day, 6 December. The parody may have been written for Holy Innocents' Day, a day when choristers and their boy bishop ruled the choir and displaced the senior clergy from their stalls. The tune which accompanied it in the 1582 Finnish Piae Cantiones manuscript was possibly that of the earlier song as a very similar melody is found in a 1360 manuscript from Moosburg, Germany. The English translation used today is by James [sic] M. Joseph."


I like early music, but I rarely get as far back as "similar to" 1360. When I was growing up in Milwaukee, a lot of kids woke up on Dec 6 and found candy in their shoes. Not in my family, alas.

I still would like to see the older Mudcat thread about this song, the thread that probably has "men and boys" in its title.

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Leeneia - As I said in the third message in this thread, click here for the thread you seek.
This thread is going around in circles, so I'm closing it.