1. A phrase that the librettist, Montagu Slater, used in Act II, as the tension mounts and the crowd begins to hunt its prey.

1. Five Flower Songs was dedicated to Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst on the occasion of their silver wedding. Both had a love of botany and had contributed generously to the cost of setting up Britten’s English Opera Group.

2. The song is made up of ten lines from Letter XVIII from The Borough (1–4, 7–10, 13–14), interspersed with four lines from ‘Tale X’ (‘The Lover’s Journey’) from Tales in Verse (1812).

3. having the form of a globe.