Narrative by Alan Helsdon:
Like so much about his visit we have no idea why Vaughan Williams went to Sheringham in the middle of a very rewarding time in Lynn. It meant four hours on the trains and it only produced two songs when he had been averaging eleven a day in Lynn and the Tilneys. The memory of the late Mrs Lee’s article about Wells in the Journal of 1899 is just one possible explanation.
After changing trains at Melton Constable he arrived at Sheringham and possibly sought out the Station Master to ask if any of his staff were known as singers. A Mr Robert Jackson, level-crossing keeper, was introduced to Vaughan Williams and he sang a new song to him. The singer didn’t even know the name, and he used several significant variants making life difficult for Vaughan Williams who had for once forgotten to leave staves empty for them all. The only words he noted were ‘Come Nancy will you marry me?’ which may or may not have been the title but the tune, in the major key, was a good one. This song, Dearest Nancy was one of the hardest to find words for having unusually long lines – 4 x 14, and not appearing once in the Full English. I had to go to New England for a set of words that fitted.
Presumably he went to the Promenade looking for fishermen on the beach but found none and, as he’d used public houses before in his search for singers, he turned to the nearest, the Crown Inn, which he would have just passed, and possibly got into conversation with the landlord, a Mr Holsey, and may thus have been introduced to a Mr Emery who produced a version of Stowbrow which he called Near Scarborough Town. It was a noble tune and sung without variation by Mr Emery. Vaughan Williams knew the song to have been included in Baring Gould’s Songs and Ballads of the West so he noted no words.
The Songs: