Three Drunken Huntsmen

Many a happy farmhand with a belly full of beer and a head full of bees has listened to this song with something near quiet ecstasy. A snatch of the song appears in a play called The Rivals (1668), which Shakespeare may have had a hand in. Later it moved to America where, in the 1840s, it was in the repertory of the Hutcheson Family of travelling singers. Nowadays it seems to be the exclusive property of children and drunks.