Timjacques:

If one gives credit to the description (as quoted above) that was given in the registration, this was "a newe northern dittye", and thus wouldn't have been written by Henry VIII, dead then those 25 years. Especially if it is alleged to have been written in his youth, as I've read somewhere.

Of course one can take the publisher's description as merely a bit of salesman's puff and write off it's claim of newness.

Dave Oesterreich