Saint Stephen and Herod

"St. Stephen and Herod" (Roud 3963, Child 22) is a traditional English Christmas carol.

[1] It depicts the martyrdom of Saint Stephen as occurring, with wild anachronism, under Herod the Great, and claims that that was the reason for St. Stephen's Day being the day after Christmas.

Herod says it is as true as that the cock cooked for his supper would crow again.

[1][2] This story, with the Wise Men as the heroes, appears in Child ballad 55, "The Carnal and the Crane".

[3] The miraculous restoration of a rooster to life is a common motif in European ballads; it frequently appears in a tale in which an innocent person condemned to death is miraculously saved from death, and in which someone expresses disbelief in that miracle as it was unlikely as the rooster's resurrection.