"The Beggars Chorus" or "The Jovial Crew" (Roud 286) is an English broadside ballad from the mid-18th century.
Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth attributes the song to Richard Brome, from his 1642 play, A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars.
[1] William Chappell argues that the song must have been improvised by an actor in the play, since it wasn't included in the first printed version.
[2] A-Hunting We Will Go is attributed Thomas Arne, who wrote it for John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1777).
He attributes the English version to Richard Brome[4] Ebsworth attributes the tone of Robert Burns' 1785 The Jolly Beggars: A Cantata and Matthew Arnold's The Scholar Gipsy (1853) directly to The Beggars Chorus.