"[2] Generally, the song recounts the viewing of a hearse, prompting the thought of death.
The listener's body is buried in a casket and assaulted by worms, then decomposes; some versions continue by stating the dead listener will be forced to eat their moldering remains.
[3] The earliest version of the verse is found in a poem by the English writer Matthew Lewis, incorporated in his popular 1796 Gothic novel The Monk, which includes the lines, "The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out and sported his eyes and his temples about."
[4][6] "The Hearse Song" is a piece of folklore with an unusually large number of variants, created over several generations.
Carl Sandburg, in his 1927 book American Songbag, printed two early variations, the first being:[7]