Butterworth then went up to Trinity College, Oxford, where he became more focused on music, becoming President of the University Music Club. He also made friends with the folk song collector Cecil Sharp; the composer and folk song enthusiast Ralph Vaughan Williams; the future Director of the Royal College of Music, Hugh Allen; and a baritone and future conductor, Adrian Boult. Butterworth and Vaughan Williams made several trips into the English countryside to collect folk songs (Butterworth collected over 450 himself, many in Sussex in 1907, and sometimes using a phonograph) and the compositions of both were strongly influenced by what they collected. Butterworth was also an expert folk dancer, being particularly keen in the art of morris dancing. He was employed for a while by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (of which he was a founder member in 1906) as a professional morris dancer, and was a member of the Demonstration Team.