Ex. 13-10: The Lads in Their Hundreds
George Butterworth
Key: F#/D#mTime: 6/8Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad
No. 5 from George Butterworth's Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad (1911), setting poems by A. E. Housman.
Butterworth was killed by a sniper at the Battle of the Somme on 5 August 1916, aged 31. His men named the trench they captured "Butterworth Trench" in his honour. Before leaving for France, he destroyed many of his manuscripts, and only a small body of work survives.
The song tells of young men who leave home to "die in their glory and never be old."