John Duarte arranged a set of 40 folk songs as a birthday present for a certain Jacqueline Byard. She then was nine years old. If she had been able to play the songs at that age, she could already pick a nice note on the guitar! It seems so, because for her tenth birthday she received from Duarte a set of arrangements of sixteenth-century pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
This set contains the first twelve songs, all from the English folk song tradition. Some melodies turn out to be international. For example, There is a Tavern in the Town is known in the Netherlands as Hoofd, Schouders, Knie en Teen (Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes).