This surely needs no introduction! In a singaround, this is one of those songs where you can’t sing too loudly – or add too many harmonies. There are five of me here (two singing in unison, one in octaves and two in harmony). One of the harmony lines is taken from the Coppers, and one is made up.
The Coppers’ version is definitive – to the point where everyone else who sings this faithfully preserves the lines they garbled. (I did change ‘prepare’ back to ‘repair’ in the second line, but I kept the downright peculiar “David’s city, sin on earth”.) I had the Waterson:Carthy version on A Dark Light in the back of my mind when I was recording this; it’s also worth mentioning that Jon Boden and friends did rather a fine job on it on AFSAD. But really, the only thing you can do wrong with a song like this is not to sing it.
Sing! Sing, all earth!
Fifty-Two Folk Songs 