Fum, Fum, Fum

It was first documented by the folklorist Joaquim Pecanins in 1904, who had heard the song at the Christmas Eve midnight mass in Prats de Lluçanès.

[1] However, the song's origins stretch back to the 16th or 17th century, according to folklorist Joan Amades.

[2][3] In 1922, the musicologist Kurt Schindler first translated the song into English, publishing it in one of the largest musical publishing houses of the era, Oliver Ditson and Company in Boston.

[1] Spanish-language versions are also popular today, and it is included in many traditional Spanish Christmas carol collections.

Before being written down in the early 20th century, the song was a typical example of a cançó de les mentides (English: "song of lies"), appropriate for the debaucherous way in which Christmas was celebrated in the 18th and 19th centuries.

[1] Some of this survives in the modern Catalan version, which in one verse asks qui dirà més gran mentida?

[3] Indeed, the ethnomusicologist Jaume Ayats notes that the word "fum" is the imperative form of the verb "fúmer", which in a literal sense means "to fornicate" but can be used as a slang form of saying "to do".

Since the word "fum" also means "smoke" in Catalan, it has been suggested the name may simply refer to the smoke rising from a chimney as seen from afar, or, as indicated in the New Oxford Book of Carols, "may imitate the sound of a drum (or perhaps the strumming of a guitar)".

"[5] Foreign-language versions typically do not literally translate the original lyrics.

For example, the typical English version of the carol, created by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw in 1953, does not take into account the satirical substratum of the original.

Fum, fum, fum Ja en respon el majoral el gran tabal, el gran tabal; jo en faré deu mil camades amb un salt totes plegades.