The singers were four Cornish miners, who were at that time, 1854, employed at some lead mines near the town of Zell.
The leader or 'Captain,' John Stocker, said that the song was an established favourite with the lead miners of Cornwall and Devonshire, and was always sung on the pay-days, and at the wakes; and that his grandfather, who died thirty years before, at the age of a hundred years, used to sing the song, and say that it was very old.
"[2] Inglis Gundry included it in his 1966 book Canow Kernow: Songs and Dances from Cornwall.
According to Gundry, Baring-Gould "tells us that 'a good many old men in Cornwall' gave him this song 'and always to the same air', which may explain why it is still so widespread.
Don’t you hear the fond tale Of the sweet nightingale, As she sings in those valleys below?