Cecil Sharp's Note 66 (1916)

No. 66. The Keys of Canterbury

For other versions with tunes, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume ii, p. 85); English County Songs (p. 32); Songs of the West (No, 22, 2d ed.); and Mason’s Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs (p. 67). Halliwell (Nursery Rhymes and Tales, p. 96) quotes a version of the words. The same theme is dramatized in the Singing Game, “There stands a Lady” (Children’s Singing Games, Set 3, Novello & Co.).

The tune, which is in the Æolian mode, is remarkable in that it is practically constructed upon the first five notes of the scale—the sixth is but once used, and then only as an auxiliary note.