The song was originally called "When Phoebus Addrest" and went to an older air, apparently an ancestor of "Drive the Cold Winter Away". The latter takes its name from the burden of a ballad by Henry Gossan, written in the second quarter of the 17th century, who directed that it be sung to "When Pheobus Addrest". Antiquarian William Chappell thought the tune dated to the 16th century, but based this on one melody in A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs (1567) that is only similar in respects. The adapted air (as "Drive the Cold Winter Away") appears in Playford's first English Dancing Master of 1651 and all later editions (through the 18th and last in 1728), the 1666 and all later editions of Playford's Musick's Delight on the Cithren, Walsh's Dancing Master and both editions of D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy. Numerous ballads were written to the song in the latter 17th century, including a drinking song for Yuletide called "All Hail to the Days" (listed also as "Drive the Cold Winter Away" in the Christmas carol section. It was printed in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859), Sharp's Country Dance Tunes (1909) and John Walsh's Complete Country Dancing-Master, Volume the Fourth (1740).