Ivor Gurney’s ‘Carol of the Skiddaw Yowes’: An Appreciation Part I

Many years ago, in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, I discovered a Nativity scene by the Scottish artist William Bell Scott (1811-90). This had been painted around 1872. The artist had used the landscape of south Ayrshire as his inspiration. This Nativity was set in a dilapidated barn near Penkill Castle. In the background can be seen the rural lowland Scottish landscape: one of the approaching shepherds is playing the bagpipes. It was this painting that made me realise that the Nativity is universal. European Renaissance painters had set it in their local landscapes, both rural and urban. So why not Ayrshire, or anywhere?

In his poem ‘The Carol of Skiddaw Yowes’, the Lake District poet Edmund Casson made the ‘translation’ from the fields (fellside) around Bethlehem to the slopes of Skiddaw in Cumberland. Michael Pilkington, (1989) has summed up the mood of this ‘carol’ as the ‘Shepherds on Skiddaw in the Lake District pray for warmth and protection in the cold of Christmas-tide.’

The Carol of Skiddaw Yowes

The shepherds on the fellside

That is by Bethany,

Had not on finger

Redder blains than we:

Jesu that is God's light,

Warm us in the cold night.

The yowes that men were minding

Long and long ago,

Were not more like to die

Than ours in the snow:

Jesu, that knows Thy sheep,

Skiddaw yowes tend and keep.

The angels that were singing,

Long and long agone,

Were not a whiter host

Than snow-flakes falling down;

Jesu, the true fold,

Gird us on the rocks cold.

Skiddaw (3054 ft) is one of the highest mountains in the Lake District. I have climbed it on two occasions: the first was on a warm summer’s day when the view from the summit was hidden in heat haze. The second was on a bitterly cold day at the end of October. The vista from the summit was stunning. With my binoculars, I could just about make out Snowdonia well over 110 miles away. Nearer at hand was the Isle of Man, the Mull of Galloway in southern Scotland and The Cheviot in Northumberland. I would be imagining what I saw, if I included the hills above Belfast and Goatfell on the Island of Arran. However, keen-eyed climbers have spotted these distant places on an exceptionally clear day.

The poet Thomas Edmund Casson was born during January 1883 at Vale View, Pennington near Ulverston, in the old county of Lancashire. His father was a local grocer and sub postmaster.  Casson was educated at Trent College in Derby, before going up to Merton College in Oxford.

During 1911 he was an assistant schoolmaster at Keswick School. The following year, Casson married a local woman, Margaret Macintyre.

Edmund Casson’s first book, A Ballad of Urswick Tarn was issued in 1905 by Ulverston publisher James Atkinson (Caxton Printing Works).  His next literary work was A Masque of King Dunmail, which had been ‘designed [for], and shall be presented, by members of Keswick School, May 1912.’ Two years later, Masques and Poems was published by Erskine MacDonald of London. This short book contained the present ‘Carol of Skiddaw Yowes.’ It would have been from this volume that Ivor Gurney took the text for his song. 

Subsequent books included The Wise Kings of Borrowdale (1927), The Red Rose of Lancashire (1928), Lord Derwentwater’s Fate and other poems (1930), The Tragedy of King Aella (1944), and George Fox, a poem (1947). In 1938 Frederick Warne published a collection of Casson’s poetry. Thomas Edmund Casson died in Ulverston during February 1960.

Interestingly, the score of the ‘Carol of Skiddaw Yowes’ wrongly attributes the text to Ernest Casson.

The poem is written in three regular stanzas, each with six lines. The rhyming scheme is interesting: ABCBDD. This is the same structure as W.B. Yeats’s used in his iconic ‘The Wild Swans at Coole.’ Yeats’ poem first appeared in the June 1917 edition of the Little Review: Casson’s Carol was published in 1914.

The ‘Carol of Skiddaw Yowes’ is written largely in standard English, with one or two Cumbrian dialect words. That said, these locutions are not exclusive to Cumbria. Clearly, the most obvious are the words ‘yowes’ and ‘blains.’  ‘Yowes’ (pronounced here to rhyme with ‘yews’) is a little more complicated. Enthusiasts of Robert Burns will know the beautiful song ‘Ca the yowes/To the Knowes’ which was collected and edited by the poet around 1794.  In Burns, the appropriate rhyme would be with ‘cows.’ ‘Yowes’ can refer to sheep in general or ‘ewes.’ ‘Blains’ means an inflammatory swelling, ‘chapped hands’ or ‘blisters.’  ‘Agone’ is an archaic word which simply means ‘ago.’  The final line of the poem begins with the word ‘gird.’ In this sense it means ‘surround us’, being a possible metaphor for a stone sheepfold.

The most remarkable allusion is contained in the lines: ‘The angels that were singing…Were not a whiter host/Than snow-flakes falling down.’ The most significant cultural transition from Bethany to Skiddaw is the presence of snow in Casson’s poem.  It is true that snow falls occasionally in Palestine, but more often in Cumberland. Producers of Christmas cards frequently depict Mary, Joseph, the Magi and the Shepherds in a snow scene. This is artistic license, a conceit. Another critical difference is the sheep themselves. Skiddaw ‘yowes’ provide both wool for clothes and meat for the table. The shepherds at Bethlehem would have overseen a flock of sheep for sacrificial purposes at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Finally, Trevor Hold (2002) has drawn attention to the fact that the North Country of Casson’s poem is ‘reminiscent’ of the nativity sequence in the Wakefield Mystery Cycle:

Lord what these weders ar cold: and I am yll happyd [wrapped]

I am nere hand dold: so long haue I nappyd

My legys thay fold: my fyngers ar chappyd...

Brief Bibliography:

Blevins, Pamela, Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain & Beauty (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008)
Hold, Trevor, Parry to Finzi: Twenty English Song-Composers (Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2002)
Lancaster, Philip, ‘Ivor Gurney: Catalogue of Musical Works’, The Ivor Gurney Society Journal, (IGSJ) Volume 12, 2006.
Pilkington, Michael, Gurney, Ireland, Quilter and Warlock in the English Solo Song: Guides to the Repertoire (London, Thames Publishing, 1989)
Thornton, R.K.R. (editor), Ivor Gurney: Collected Letters (Manchester, Mid Northumberland Arts Group/Carcanet Press, 1991)
Walter, George, Chronology of Gurney’s Life and Work (http://www.geneva.edu/~dksmith/gurney/chronology.html) [Accessed 27/08/25]
The files of The Gramophone, Ivor Gurney Society Journal, etc

To be continued...

With thanks to the Ivor Gurney Society Journal, Volume 23, 2017 where this essay was first published.