The song appears in Act 4, Scene II of the play The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill by Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle and William Haughton, first printed 1603 (although an earlier performance was mentioned in a Philip Henslowe diary entry from December 1599). The play is one of several variants of the medieval tale of patient Griselda, as also told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In the script, this lute-accompanied lullaby is introduced simply by the sub-title "The Song" (as are other songs in the play). However, it has since become referred to commonly as The Cradle Song.