"The Week before Easter"
When this first appeared in print, as a broadside in the 17th-century, it had the title "The Forlorn Lover; Declaring How a Lass Gave Her Lover Three Slips for a Tester and Married Another the Week before Easter". Clare collected this text from his parents and it is sung here to a tune collected in 1898 from Mr Copper of Rottingdean in Sussex.

"A Brisk Young Shepherd"
This is a song that Clare's mother sang, one of a family of songs descending from the broadside "The Oxfordshire Tragedy" it is interesting that Clare should have so radically change the sentiments of the young unmarried mother in his song when he came to rewrite it. Here her shame is such that she wishes herself dead but her child born and "smiling on its daddies knee".

"A Faithless Shepherd"
Clare’s extended version of the previous song, with its changed emphasis. In this version that child has been born but the young mother, concerned at the lot of a bastard child, wishes that they were both dead and our sorrows both away. It is worth observing here that Clare's father was born out of wedlock giving him the real understanding of the consequences of bastardy. Both texts are sung to a tune collected from Joseph Taylor, at Brigg in Lincolnshire, in 1908.

"Mary Neil"
And unnamed man was the source for this text which Clare described as an Old Ballad. Though he admits to having made some additions to the text comparison with a broadside version reveals that these were fairly minor alterations. Clare used this is the basis for a poem written in the 1850s the text of which is also given in John Clare and the Folk Tradition. The melody used here was sung by a Mrs Russell of Upwey, Dorset for a song entitled "The Stealing of Mary Neil".

"O Would I were the little Bird"
The expression of a wish to be an animal, or as here a Bird, flower and insect, in order to secure one's love is fairly common in folk song though I believe this text to be substantially Clare's own work. Sung to the melody "The Loyal Lover" collected by Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould.

"The True Lovers Farewell"
Clare's manuscript says of this song "this is an old Ballad which my father sings, he learned it when a child of his mother who knew it when a lass, therefore it cannot be much less than 100 years old". This is under the heading "The Origin of Burns Red Red Rose". Clare did however produced a rewritten text of this song himself. The tune was collected from Mrs Cranstone, Billingshurst, July 1907, by George Butterworth.

"The Constant Sailor's Return"
No title is given for this in Clare's manuscripts and I strongly suspect that he wrote the song himself. The scene of lovers parted by war and dramatically reunited is, however, common in the folk tradition where it is frequently accompanied by a test of fidelity and the broken token symbol. A not dissimilar song "Claudy Banks", sung by Mr Frederick White of Southampton, provides the melody used here.