Greensleeves (What Child Is This?)

 On this Christmas Eve, our gift to you is a beautiful old carol. Now, in our country, we often know it as “What Child Is This?” based on a Christmas verse that was written more than a century and a half ago. But its melody is even more deeply enshrined in our common human experience. In fact, think about it! This tune — “Greensleeves” — is one of the oldest melodies that we in the western world even know. Dating back to at least the Elizabethan period of English history, “Greensleeves” was, in fact, so well known by the time of William Shakespeare that he could refer to it by name three times in his play, “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” Meanwhile, this ancient, beautiful melody started being associated with Christmas and New Year’s as early as the 1680s. And yet, this tune never really seems to get very old, does it?