This piece is based on a folk song from Lincolnshire which was first notated after the singing of Joseph Taylor in 1905 when he won first prize by presenting it at a festival that was held in the market town of Brigg.

The tune itself has a medieval quality replete with simple turning figures and is in a pure Aeolian mode. The rhythm gently skips along with a plaintive 6/8 lilt as the words speak of a love that is new but also of parting through unfaithfulness or inevitable death.

The first three verses by the tenor soloist are accompanied wordlessly by the choir in a gentle "oh" vocalism that creates a nostalgic, ancient mood. Grainger employs standard chords with a few slightly more complex chords (sevenths and ninths) generated from suspended tones near the cadential points of the lines.

The soloist describes how he "rose up with the lark in the morning" in order to come to Brigg Fair on a fine and fair day on the fifth of August. And there he meet with his love and "took hold of her lily-white hand, O and merrily was her heart, And now we've met together I hope we ne'er shall part." A lovely swell of chords by the humming chorus makes a brief, charming bridge between the second and third verses.

The chorus takes over the setting of the text in the fourth verse in full, rich harmonies. The tenor sings a beautiful obbligato figure on an open "ah" vocable that is held and then descends chromatically. This express a deeply felt sorrow that has been either experienced or is anticipated, as the chorus declares and explains "For it's meeting is a pleasure, And parting is a grief, But an unconstant lover is worse than any thief."

An extended humming interlude gradually diminishes into the background as the soloist sings the fifth and last verse in a slower, intensely reflective tempo: "The green leaves they shall wither, And the branches they shall die, If ever I prove false to her, To the girl that loves me." The music closes simply with the last word without coda or final cadence.

This folk song arrangement is one of the composer's best, and so impressed Grainger's friend, composer Frederick Delius, whom Grainger greatly admired, that Delius based his orchestral Rhapsody (1907) on the same tune.

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