Who wrote the words to "Ding Dong Merrily on High"?

George Ratcliffe Woodward wrote the words to “Ding Dong Merrily on High.” He was an English composer and hymnwriter whose lyrics give the carol its buoyant English verses and its distinctive Latin refrain, “Gloria, Hosanna in excelsis.”

The carol was first published in 1924 in Woodward’s The Cambridge Carol-Book: Being Fifty-two Songs for Christmas, Easter, and Other Seasons. Woodward’s interest in church music and bell ringing is reflected in the text’s imagery of bells ringing in heaven, steeples, ringers, and singers.

The melody is much older than Woodward’s words. It originated as a French secular dance tune known as “Branle de l’Official,” printed in Thoinot Arbeau’s 1589 dance treatise Orchésographie. Charles Wood supplied the harmonization for the publication, and later arrangements—including one by David Willcocks—helped establish the piece in modern choral repertory. Woodward is therefore the lyricist, not the original composer of the tune.