Both the text and the tune to which "The Sussex Carol" is now sung were discovered and written down by Cecil Sharp in Buckland, Gloucestershire and Ralph Vaughan Williams from Mrs. Verrall on May 24, 1904 in Horsham, Sussex. The words were first published by Luke Wadding, a 17th-century Irish bishop, in a work called Small Garland of Pious and Godly Songs (1684). It is unclear whether Wadding wrote the song or was recording an earlier composition. An earlier version using a different tune and a variation on the first line, "On Christmas night true Christians sing", was published as early as 1878 in Henry Ramsden Bramley and John Stainer's Christmas Carols New and Old. It is included in The New Oxford Book of Carols (#139).