Carol of the Day: I Saw Three Ships

If you're looking for a carol with a rather bizarre history, I Saw Three Ships, is the one.

The maritime theme of the texts originates in the Mediterranean journey of the supposed relics of the Magi. Three skulls, reported to be those of the three visitors to the infant Jesus, were shipped through the European sea from Constantinople in the fourth century, later taken to Milan, and eventually to their resting place in the Cologne Cathedral. There are dozens of variants to the text, including "As I sat on a sunny bank," a lesser-known carol.

There is a kind of playfulness to the text, where one verse leads to another. In some ways, the fantastical nature sounds like a children's book: "O they sailed into Bethlehem," a city with no navigable waterway. One rather rough, folk-like version had lines like: "I axed 'em what they'd got on board...They said they'd got three crawns (skulls)...I axed 'em where they was taken to." Makes me think of a book series I read to my children If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.

Here's a version with a different tune than we sing:

And one by Sting: