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1. It’s of a Man from Birmingham Town
2. Seventeen Come Sunday
The arrangement of 'It's of a Man from Birmingham Town' dates from 1971 and that of 'Seventeen Come Sunday' from 1973. The violent ending of the former is certainly not something that the composer would wish to endorse. His interest in this song, apart from its being in the Dorian mode, was sparked by the paucity of folksongs that mention Birmingham, the city of his birth. It was, surprisingly, collected in Rollesby, Norfolk, by Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth in 1910, from the singing of George Locke, who was around 70 years of age. The second arrangement is of a much more familiar song, which existed in broadside versions in the nineteenth century and was collected by numerous folksong researchers in the early twentieth century. The version here is taken from one of the several transcriptions made by Vaughan Williams.