One Horse Sleigh

This is very known ‘Jingle Bells’ song, which has several alternative names, like this one ‘One Horse Sleigh,’ was numerous times sang by the huge amount of performers. On YouTube, you may find it represented in hundreds, if not thousands of versions. The same loved song for the unusual covers – metal and rock ones are extremely popular, in addition to the original carol pop version.
It was originally published in 1857 under the name ‘One Horse Open Sleigh.’ So this means that in 2017, it will be officially 160 years old! And it still tops the Christmas charts every year! Not bad for a piece of 160 years. An author of it was reverend James Lord Pierpont who allegedly wrote it to be sung by the secular choir, but historians dispute this issue. Nevertheless, now it is the best connection in brains for the Christmas in general and it is the most sung in the world on the Eve thanks to it simple and unpretentious lyrics. There are other extremely popular Christmas songs to carol, but they are rather more sophisticated than this one and this piece definitely doesn’t require a choir or back up, like, for example, Carol of the Bells requires.
There is a house in Medford, Massachusetts, the US, holding a plate saying that Jingle Bells was composed in this building. It is so popular that every kid aged at least 5 already knows the first four lines from it and at least two lines of the chorus:
Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh
O'er the fields we go
Laughing all the way
…
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way…
Georgians, in which church the author was a reverend, are proud of their prolific fellow citizen and raised many signs of notability to this man in their city and the state (Savannah, Georgia). The song contains several references to the bygone days – the expression ‘Two forty as his speed’ and the word ‘upsot.’ The first one means the speed of the diligence with a horse, which is 22.5 miles per hour and it is quite fast, so the breed of a horse must be a nice one. And the second item means ‘upset,’ but it also means ‘not sober, intoxicated or drunken’ as it was the word ‘sot,’ which is a drunkard, but later it has rather transformed in the ‘sober’ with the opposite meaning. There are different versions of the lyrics, depending on the time or their origin, and there are several language versions that differ in the length of the stanza and in the translated meaning. Generally, it gives the bright mood every time and the main essence is that the fellow(s) is/are riding in the sleighs with 1 horse and they are going through the snow-covered parts of the town and of nature, like houses and/or trees. They are entertaining themselves and they feel gaiety in the mood, so they may be even a little not sober. The latter fact contributes to the opposition of the possible origin of this carol as the singing for the kids’ choir.

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Read more about this song on Wikipedia and listen on Youtube