Benjamin Britten was never a "folkish" composer, that is, his concert music did not sound folkish or popular in the fashion of Delius, Vaughan Williams, or Holst, or built from folk elements as was that of Bartók or Janacek. He responded strongly to folk song and occasionally did admit some to his concert works (as in Canadian Carnival and Suite on English Folk Songs "A Time There Was"). In addition, he wrote over 50 arrangements of English folk songs, harmonized and written ingeniously for piano accompaniment.

Beginning in 1943, while living in the United States, he wrote six sets of folk songs for solo voice and piano, containing five to ten songs each. The six contain, respectively, folk songs from the British Isles, France, the British Isles again, from Ireland (drawn from "Moore's Irish Melodies"), once again the British Isles, and finally from England. He wrote a further eight settings in the last year of his life, 1976, with harp rather than piano accompaniment, under the title Eight British Folksongs.

Britten composed the settings in order to have a popular, light-weight, and accessible item for Peter Pears to sing on their recitals. He gave little indication that he was attracted to the musical qualities of the first set, for in a magazine interview he remarked on "the weakness of the tunes." But it is quite clear from the care and imagination he put into these dozens of settings that there was something in them that appealed to him, be it music or the original folk lyrics.

The Third Volume served much the same purpose after Britten and Pears returned to England. They were composed in 1947, when the two were already planning to begin the Aldeburgh Festival in the eastern seacoast city near Britten's hometown of Lowestoft. As was always the case of Britten's folk song settings (at least those in the English language), these were always a hit with recital audiences. Britten's piano parts and harmonizations are subtle and constantly enlivened by little surprises. There are seven songs in this set:

1. The plough boy

2. There's none to sooth

3. Sweet Polly Oliver

4. The miller of Dee

5. The foggy, foggy dew

6. O Waly, Waly

7. Come you not from Newcastle.

Britten also made orchestral arrangements of his settings for the first, sixth, and last of this set.

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