The earliest known printed version of “The First Noel” appears in 1823.
The carol is of Cornish origin, but its early history was transmitted largely through oral tradition. Its current form was printed in William Sandys’s collection *Carols Ancient and Modern* in 1823. The spelling “Nowell” was also common in early versions; “nowell” derives from the French *Noël* and historically referred to Christmas or a Christmas song.
The date can cause confusion because the carol was printed again in *Gilbert and Sandys Carols* in 1833, a later collection also associated with William Sandys. The familiar four-part arrangement heard today is later still: English composer John Stainer published his widely used setting in *Carols, New and Old* in 1871.
Although the melody sounds ancient, musicologist Anne Gilchrist noted in 1915 that it had not been documented before Sandys’s publication. She proposed that it may have developed from an orally transmitted part of another carol, but that theory remains conjectural.