Seventeen Come Sunday

"Seventeen Come Sunday", also known as "As I Roved Out", is an English folk song (Roud 277, Laws O17) which was arranged by Percy Grainger for choir and brass accompaniment in 1912 and used in the first movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite in 1923. The words were first published between 1838 and 1845.[1]

According to Roud and Bishop[2]

"This was a widely known song in England, and was also popular in Ireland and Scotland. It is one of those which earlier editors, such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Cecil Sharp, felt obliged to soften or rewrite for publication. It was also common on broadsides throughout the nineteenth century"

An earlier version was first printed on a broadside of around 1810 with the title Maid and the Soldier. Early broadside versions were sad songs focused on the abandonment of the girl by the young man.[3] Later broadside and traditional folk versions celebrate a sexual encounter. A censored version published by Baring-Gould and Sharp substitutes a proposal of marriage for the encounter.

  1. ^ First publication
  2. ^ Roud, Steve & Julia Bishop (2012). The New Penguin Book of Folk Songs. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-141-19461-5.
  3. ^ Roud & Bishop p. 404

© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search