John Lewin is the author of a number of Manx carvals in the early 19th Century which advocated temperance. He was a sumner (church warden of official) in Jurby, Isle of Man, during the 1830s, but other than this there is little biographical information available. There are four extant poems that are attributed to him, all of which were collected as folk songs at the end of the 19th Century. A melody for this carval, entitled ‘Lewin’s ‘Total’ Hymn’, was collected by the Manx folk music collector, W. H. Gill, on Saturday August 3, 1895, from a John Kissack at Ballacurrey Cottage, Jurby.