"Dives and Lazarus" appears as #56 in F. J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Along with "The Cherry Tree Carol" it is one of the few Child ballads with a biblical theme. The tune is "Kingsfold". Thought by some scholars to date back to the Middle Ages, "Kingsfold" is a folk tune set to a variety of texts in England and Ireland. The tune was published in English Country Songs (1893), an anthology compiled by Lucy E. Broadwood and J. A. Fuller Maitland. After having heard the tune in Kingsfold, Sussex, England , Ralph Vaughan Williams introduced it as a hymn tune in The English Hymnal (1906) as a setting for Horatius Bonar's "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say". It is used in WOV 730 for "My Soul Proclaims Your Greatness". It is also used in other hymnals for "O sing a song of Bethlehem" and "I heard the voice of Jesus say".