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."
According to Captain John Stocker, this tune has been a long-standing favorite among Cornwall and Devonshire lead miners, typically sung on paydays and at social gatherings; he shared that his late grandfather, who lived to be one hundred years old, would often sing the song and assert its antiquity.