Lincolnshire Posy as described by Grainger is “a bunch of musical wildflowers” based on folksongs collected in Lincolnshire England, mainly in the years 1905 to 1906, and the work is dedicated to the old folksingers who sang so sweetly to me. For these folksingers were the kings and queens of song! Indeed, each number is intended to be a kind of musical portrait of the singer who sang its undying melody — a musical portrait of the singer’s personality no less than of his habits of song — his regular or irregular wonts of rhythm, his preference for gaunt or ornately arabesque delivery, his contrasts of legato and staccato, his tendency towards breadth or delicacy of tone.”
Lisbon is a “Sailors Song” that tells the story of William, who is about to set sail for battle, and his love, Nancy who is carrying William’s baby. After pleading for his to stay and marry her, she sings how she would follow her lover into battle, “through France and Spain all for to be your bride.” The singer, Mr. Deane, was extremely old and too weak when Grainger first asked him to sing. Unable to write it all down the first time, Grainger returned the next year “to get Mr. Deane’s tune ‘alive or dead.’ I thought he might as well die singing it as die without singing it.”
Horkstow Grange is a narrative of local history and subtitled, The Miser and his Man – a local tragedy. The story focuses on a falling out and ensuing fight between Steeleye Span, the miser and his man John Bowlin’. This was sung to Grainger by George Gouldthorpe, an impoverished English peasant who had spent his life working on the roads, and described by the composer ad having “a life of drudgery, ending, in old age, in want and hardship.” Grainger wrote, “In recalling Mr. Gouldthrope I think most of the mild yet lordly grandeur of his nature, and this is what I have tried to mirror in my setting of “Horkstow Grange.”
Rufford Park Poachers is a song about an attack on “forty bold poachers that night in Rufford Park.” Joseph Taylor, Grainger’s source, was described as “the perfect type of English yeoman: sturdy and robust, yet the soul of sweetness, gentleness, courteousness and geniality. Grainger had two different recordings of Taylor’s “cheery voice.” To reconcile the divergencies in Taylor’s two versions, Grainger combines them so that “practically all of Mr. Taylor’s variants appear in my setting.”
The Brisk Young Sailor was sung by the “proper Mrs. Thompson.” After seven long years, the brisk young sailor returns to wed his true love: “Now to the church they went together, and they got married there with joy.”
Lord Melbourne is a genuine English War Song. George Wray was eighty years old when he sang it to Grainger. Wray had a tough personality, and “he lived alone, surrounded by evil-smelling cats.” Grainger describes his singing as “more irregular in rhythm than any I ever heard.” The resultant setting uses “Free Time” with instructions, “The bandleader should give free rein to his rhythmic fancy, just as folk-singers do.”
The Lost Lady Found is a “dance-song-come down to us from the days when voices, rather than instruments, held village dances together.” This tune was collected not by Grainger, but by Miss Lucy E. Broadwood. Grainger’s score carries the instructions for the “dance-action” with the added direction, “and, if possible, demonstrated to the band by the bandmaster.” Stolen by Gypsies from her uncle, a fair maid was found fortuitously years later by “a young squire who loved her so.” They returned to town just as the unjustly accused uncle was about to be hung for her disappearance. With the uncle saved and the “lost lady found,” their bells they did ring and their music did play, ev’ry house in that valley with mirth did resound.”