DESCRIPTION:
Vaughan Williams Composed the melody to Linden Lea in what he described as as a song written in the Dorset Style of folk song. The words are by William Barnes and again the text is in the style of Dorset dialect. It is not certyain whether the tune was entirely written byVaughan Williams or adapted from a Dorset Folk song.VIt was his first publisheds work. He went on to become one of the great English composers writing amongst many other things 9 symphonies.
Barnes a church of England Vicar and apoet greatly interested in language and in particular the purity of the English language. He wanted to ban Latin and Greek influences on English replacing them with Anglo Saxon alternatives . He was a friend of Tennyson and Hardy .