"What Child Is This?" is unusual among Christmas carols for its persistent questioning - where most carols announce, this one asks - and for the shadow of the cross it casts over the manger. Set to the hauntingly minor-keyed 'Greensleeves,' it transforms a secular Elizabethan ballad into a meditation on the Incarnation that refuses to sentimentalize the nativity scene.
The Composition
William Chatterton Dix (1837-1898) wrote the text as part of a longer poem titled 'The Manger Throne,' published around 1865. The carol's three stanzas were extracted from this longer poem and matched to the traditional English tune 'Greensleeves,' a melody of uncertain origin dating from at least the late sixteenth century. The carol was published in the 1871 edition of Christmas Carols New and Old, the influential collection edited by Henry Bramley and John Stainer that also popularized 'The First Noel' and other traditional carols. The pairing of Dix's questioning text with the minor-key ballad tune proved inspired: the melody's wistful quality exactly captures the carol's tone of wondering reverence before a mystery.
Biblical Text
Luke 2:7 - 'And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn' - is the nativity scene the carol interrogates. The question 'What child is this?' is Dix's device for leading the singer from the surface observation (a baby in a manger) to the Christological confession (Christ, the King). The manger is a place of poverty and displacement: the carol asks why a king - whose identity the hymn progressively reveals - should lie 'in mean estate.'
Isaiah 7:14 - 'Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel' - is the implicit background of the Incarnation claim. The child in the manger is the fulfillment of Isaiah's sign: the virgin-born son whose very name means 'God with us.'
Colossians 2:9 - 'For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily' - is the theological climax toward which the carol's questions tend. The second stanza ('So bring him incense, gold, and myrrh / Come peasant, king, to own him') echoes the Magi's gifts and anticipates universal homage. The third stanza makes the confession explicit: 'This, this is Christ the King.'
The Shadow of the Cross
The carol's second stanza is its most unusual. Where most nativity carols remain in the stable, Dix inserts Good Friday into Christmas: 'Nails, spear shall pierce him through / The cross be borne for me, for you.' At the manger, the nails are already present - not as present fact but as future certainty. The myrrh of the Magi (alluded to in 'incense, gold, and myrrh') was the burial spice: it too pointed forward to death. Dix refuses to sentimentalize the Incarnation by isolating it from the Atonement: the child in the manger is the one who came to die, and any worship that does not know this is incomplete.
This theological move - the cross at the manger - is characteristic of the best Christmas theology. The Incarnation is not complete in itself; it is the beginning of the redemptive narrative that culminates in crucifixion and resurrection. By placing the cross imagery in the second stanza, Dix gives the carol a narrative arc from wonder (first stanza) through sacrifice (second stanza) to confession (third stanza).
The Creator
William Chatterton Dix (1837-1898) was a marine insurance broker in Bristol - not a clergyman - who nevertheless wrote some of the finest Victorian hymns. He suffered a severe illness at age 29 that kept him bedridden for months, during which he wrote several of his best hymns, reportedly including 'As with Gladness Men of Old' (the Epiphany hymn). His hymns are notable for their doctrinal clarity and their willingness to engage the harder themes of the Christian life. He was a member of the Church of England and wrote from within an Anglican theological tradition that emphasized both the Incarnation and the Atonement.
Musical Analysis
The tune 'Greensleeves' in its standard carol harmonization is in A minor (or Dorian mode), with a characteristic falling third at the opening and a major-key refrain. The minor-to-major movement of verse to chorus (in some harmonizations) creates a harmonic drama that matches the theological movement: the questioning, shadowed verse gives way to the brighter confession of the refrain. The melody's archaic quality - its modal inflections and ballad rhythm - give the carol a sense of timelessness that elevates it above the merely seasonal.
Legacy
The carol is performed worldwide and is a standard of Advent and Christmas concerts, carol services, and liturgical worship. Its combination of beauty, doctrinal substance, and emotional complexity has made it one of the small number of carols that reward repeated attention rather than merely providing seasonal backdrop.