"Seventeen Come Sunday" for Brass Quintet From English Folk Song Suite Arranged by Jari Villanueva

“Seventeen Come Sunday” is an English folk song which is used in the first movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite and a choral version by Percy Grainger (1912). The words were first published between 1838 and 1845.

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. 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.