Greensleeves

Despite the popular belief that Henry VIII composed it, "Greensleeves" almost certainly postdates him: the melody sits over an Italian ground bass — the romanesca and passamezzo antico — that reached England only after his death. The earliest firm record is a broadside ballad, "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves," registered to Richard Jones at the London Stationers' Company in September 1580; the song was printed four years later in A Handful of Pleasant Delights. Shakespeare has Mistress Ford name the tune twice in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and in 1865 William Chatterton Dix set fresh words to it as the carol "What Child Is This?"