Traditional English Folk Melody

KINGSFOLD is a traditional English folk melody rather than the work of a known individual composer. A closely related form was published as LAZARUS in Lucy E. Broadwood and J. A. Fuller Maitland’s English County Songs in 1893. Broadwood’s source came through the musician A. J. Hipkins, who had known the melody for years under the name Lazarus.

Ralph Vaughan Williams encountered another variant at Kingsfold, Sussex, in December 1904, where it was sung with a secular ballad. He published that collected version in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society in 1905, then adapted the melodic family for The English Hymnal in 1906. There he named the hymn tune KINGSFOLD and paired it with I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say. Because the underlying melody is traditional, no single composer can responsibly be assigned to it.