The Captain's Apprentice (Norfolk)

Collected (and set with a piano accompaniment) by Ralph Vaughan Williams, from the collection Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties. For solo voice with Piano accompaniment. First sung to R. Vaughan Williams by James 'Duggie'Carter, a King's Lynn fisherman, the song tells the story of the death of a young boy aboard a ship. According to comments from RVW himself, The ballad was probably called forth by a particularly brutal case of ill treatment,similiar to that narrated in it, which occurred some twenty or thirty years ago.