As Jacob with travel was weary one day

As Jacob with travel was weary one day. Anonymous, perhaps 18th- or 19th-century American or British. This carol was published in Bramley* and Stainer*’s Christmas Carols New and Old (1871) with the title ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. It was printed in the Oxford Book of Carols (1928), and the University Carol Book (1961). It was also included in Miles Mark Fisher’s Negro Slave Songs in the United States (1953), which suggests an alternative origin.  It came into British hymnbooks with New Catholic Hymnal (1971), and thereafter in English Praise (1975). It was included in MHfT, and thus in A&MNS, and it has been retained in A&MCP and A&MRW  It is also in HP. Erik Routley* described it as...