There seems to be general agreement that the words are by Isaac Watts (1674-1748). However convincing arguments seem to establish that the music is NOT by Handel but by some unknown, extremely gifted musician.

Not only do we not know who wrote the music of this Christmas song, but we are also totally ignorant of who devised the harmonies to "accompany" it, we may prefer to say harmonies from which the song comes.

A simple, easy to perform, effective 4-voice fugue, with new "holistic" words designed for it.

Written in 4/4, all bar numbers refer to the original tune written in 2/4. The subject, indicated "A", uses only the first 2 cells (bars 1-4), first inverted, for entries 1 and 3, then normally for entries 2 and 4, with very simple harmonies of I, V, and IV chords.

The interludes, indicated "BB", use only the second cell (bars 3-4), with the harmonies of a diatonic major circle. The 4 voices are completely diatonic, resulting in an easy performance.

This fugue is of ternary form, three (original) 16-bar sections where the first section has 4 subject entries AAAA of 4 bars each, the second and third sections have only 2 subject entries, preceded by canonic interludes, BBAA, for an overall form of AAAA BBAA BBAA.