Analyses

The songs origin is a mystery, it was rediscovered by Cecil sharp in 1917 in the possession of the Ritchie family of Kentucky. The Ritchie family claimed it had been in their family since the 18th century when they migrated from England. Another version of the song was found in Missouri with local memory of it coming to America with 19th century migrants.

The song talks of a ghostly procession through Nottamun Town, which may refer to Nottingham. Some folklorists have suggested the song is inspired by the Wild Hunt a tradition of a ghostly procession common across Europe other the Dance Macabre a late medieval tradition celebrating death.

 The nonsense lyrics have provoked much discussion about the song's meaning. The main theory at present is it is a medieval Mummer's song. Mummer's were people who at festivals dressed up in costumes, anything from shepherds, doctors, devils, Moors, mythical beasts to wildmen of the woods. The songs they sang were often called, World Turned Upside Down songs, as they sang of a world where everything was wrong: black dogs were all white in colour, people walked on their hands and so on...

This can be seen in the lyrics of Nottamun Town which are built from contradictions and impossibilities: A grey mare with a green stripe on her back, yet every hair is coal black. The horse stands still and throws the rider down. The singer rides "on my ten toes." People talk all day without saying a word. It rains all day to "stifle the dust." A hard, hot, cold, frozen stone. Ten thousand people around him, yet he is alone. Ten thousand drown who were never born. 

The song lyrics mirror the lyrics of many surviving mumma's songs in many ways except one. No other mumma's song mentions a ghostly procession lead by a king. This has lead some folklorist to suggest it was written based on an older tradition onto which the World Turned Upside Down motiff was grafted.

If the ghostly procession does indeed preserve an echo of the Wild Hunt, then Nottamun Town may be one of the oldest narrative survivals in the English folk tradition, its ancient core disguised beneath the playful contradictions of a later Mummers' song. Ghostly hunts led by kings are deeply rooted in the folklore of the Germanic world, while the song's impossible imagery belongs to a much later folk tradition. Whether these two themes are connected or whether the song preserves a genuine echo of England's early beliefs can never be proven. Like so much folklore, its greatest mysteries remain beyond our reach, leaving each generation to wonder how much of England's distant past still lingers within its songs.