Arranged 1942; 4 minutes

“I have arranged a few British folksongs which have been a 'wow' wherever performed so far!” Britten wrote in 1941, towards the end of his concert tours in the United States with tenor Peter Pears. His earliest collection, Folk Song Arrangements, Volume 1—British Isles includes the Scottish folksong The trees they grow so high. At the time, Britten was homesick for England, awaiting wartime passage home from the East Coast. The folksong tells a tale of a tragic, unequal marriage arranged by the woman’s father, to a boy much younger than she. The boy quickly grows, fathers a child, then dies young in battle. The song ends in mourning.