"Seventeen Come Sunday" is an English folk song which was used in the first movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite and in a choral version by Percy Grainger (1912).
According to The New Penguin Book of Folk Songs:
This was a widely known song in England and was also popular in Ireland and Scotland. It is one of those which earlier editors, such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Cecil Sharp, felt obliged to soften or rewrite for publication. It was also common on broadsides throughout the nineteenth century.
An earlier version was first printed on a broadside around 1810 with the title "The Maid and the Soldier". Early broadside versions were sad songs focused on the abandonment of the girl by the young man. Later broadside and traditional folk versions celebrate a sexual encounter. A censored version published by Baring-Gould and Sharp substitutes a proposal of marriage for the encounter.
Ralph Vaughan Williams used it as the second melody of the first movement of his English Folk Song Suite (1923) along with "Pretty Caroline" and "Dives and Lazarus".
This has been recorded by The Bothy Band, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention and others.