The interesting thing about Redwing is that it's the tune which seems to have got into the traditional repertoire ... probably, in East Anglia, because it fits nicely with the East Anglian obsession with good polkas. The words were most likely known (there's a good parody of the song used as a rugby song - words not on the web as far as I can tell) but never really all that popular, at least around here (here being East Anglia). I remember it from my childhood so I think it must have been very popular around the 50s and 60s.

:-)
Ian