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

The song was first published in 1920 by Boosey and Co. In a letter to J.W. Haines dated 9 February 1921, Gurney states that he had received ‘very nice letter’ from the poet’s wife, ‘to acknowledge the Carol, and to say she likes it.’ (Collected Letters, 1991). The song was subsequently reprinted in 1925. It was included in A Heritage of 20th Century British Song: Vol 2 published by Boosey and Hawkes in 1977 and again in 1984. In 1988 Richard Graves arranged ‘Skiddaw Yowes’ for SATB. It was printed by Banks Music Publications, Sand Hutton, York.

It is strange that I can locate only a single current recording of the ‘Carol of Skiddaw Yowes.’ This was made by the baritone Benjamin Luxon and pianist David Willison back in 1990 and released on the Chandos label. The CD includes a good selection of songs by George Butterworth including Six Songs from ‘A Shropshire Lad’, ‘Bredon Hill and other songs’ and twenty numbers by Ivor Gurney. They are all beautifully sung, but as noted above, Luxon takes ‘Skiddaw Yowes’ at a jaunty pace.

The Lake District does not appear to have acted as inspiration for composers in quite the same way as Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and London.  Philip Scowcroft, writing for MusicWeb International has scoured the catalogues for works which evoke this inspiring landscape. 

The late Arthur Butterworth wrote a set of piano pieces entitled Lakeland Summer Nights, op.10 in 1949. One major work was Cecil Armstrong Gibbs’ Symphony No. 3 in B-Flat Major, Op. 104, ‘Westmorland’ composed in 1944. This is an impressive work that does not seem to have gained traction with concert promoters. The same composer produced Lakeland Pictures for piano solo, op.98 (1940).  Scowcroft mentions a chamber work by Cyril Rootham entitled In the Lake Country for violin (viola or cello) and piano (1924).  My personal favourite evocation of the Lake District is Maurice Johnstone’s impressionistic tone poem, Cumbrian Rhapsody: Tarn Hows (1951) Fortunately, a recording of this work was released in 1999 by ASV Whiteline label on CDWHL 2116. It is difficult to understand how such a recollective piece has not entered the concert hall and radio studios. In 1985, John McCabe wrote his Cloudcatcher Fells for brass band: this is a masterpiece of Lake District landscape ‘tone-painting.’ It has been recorded a few times.

I have always wanted to hear Samuel Hartley Braithwaite’s Symphonic Scherzo A Night by Dalegarth Bridge, first heard under the baton of Dan Godfrey at Bournemouth on 22 December 1920. It has a tantalising title and is surely deserving of revival.

Finally, one work that was never completed (sketches remain) was Edward Elgar’s Lakes Overture, sketched in the early 1880s. It would surely have been a great companion piece to the well-known Froissart Overture and the sun-drenched In the South.

Ivor Gurney’s ‘Carol of Skiddaw Yowes’ remains one of his most satisfying works. Its straightforwardness adds to the dramatic ‘haunting’ effect. As Michael Pilkington (1989) has noted, it is an ideal song for performance at Christmastide. It is one of the loveliest and most effective evocations of the Lake District and of the ‘shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.’

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 15/05/18]
The files of The Gramophone, Ivor Gurney Society Journal, etc 

Discography:
When I was One-and-Twenty: George Butterworth and Ivor Gurney Songs: Benjamin Luxon (baritone), David Willison (piano) (CHANDOS CHAN 8831 1990)

Concluded

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

 

 

 

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

Ivor Gurney composed his song ‘Carol of Skiddaw Yowes’ around Christmas 1919. The major event during May of that year had been the publication War’s Embers by Sidgwick and Jackson. In August, Gurney had submitted several poems to some important journals including The Century, The Athenæum, Harper’s Magazine, The New Witness and The Spectator. None were accepted. Almost as a consolation prize, he went on a walking holiday into the Welsh Black Mountains. He was accompanied by John Wilton Haines [J.W.H] who was to become the dedicatee of Gurney’s ‘Carol.’ Haines was a poet, solicitor and an amateur botanist living at Hucclecote, near Gloucester. He was acquainted with the Dymock Poets, including Robert Frost and Edward Thomas. After his holiday, Gurney moved to High Wycombe, where he was appointed organist at Christ Church, Crenden Street. He had held this position in 1914 before entering military service. George Walter’s chronology states that Gurney and F.W. Harvey visited the author and poet John Masefield at Boar’s Hill, Oxford during November.

Fig.1

The outstanding feature of Ivor Gurney’s setting of ‘Skiddaw Yowes’ is its subtle simplicity, reflecting the humble station of the shepherds. The song is ostensibly written in A minor: however, the melody is modal, which means that the notes F and G are ‘natural’ rather than ‘sharp.’ There is not a single accidental in the entire score. The vocal range is limited to the mid-range, extending from D’ to E”.  This makes it an ideal song for baritone or contralto singers. Gurney signed the music to be played ‘quasi andante’ which is a little ambiguous. It means ‘almost’ or ‘nearly’ moderately slow or ‘walking pace.’ In fact, the only recording of this song takes a slightly faster pace than this instruction implies.

The ‘Carol’ utilises the same melody for all three verses, with some slight variants demanded by the text. Metrically, the song is interesting. Largely written in 2/4 time, there is the occasional bar of 3/4 ‘waltz’ time. This invariably occurs at the end of the last line of each verse before reverting to the original time signature on the final syllable.

Fig.2

Typically, the melody moves by step and small ‘skips’, though there are two melodic intervals that stand out in the vocal line of each stanza. The opening anacrusis leap of a fourth (E-A) (Fig.1) and the haunting upward perfect fifth (G-D) at the end of the fourth line of each verse – e.g. ‘falling down’ (Fig.2). The melody then rises to the highest note, E which is reserved for the word ‘Jesu’ where it is sung on the first syllable falling by step onto the D for the second (Fig.2). This is heard in all three verses.

The Scotch Snap is a prominent feature of this song. It is used in several places, to accommodate words that can be sung with a short, followed by a long, syllable. For example, ‘Skiddaw’, ‘Redder,’ ‘Shepherds’ (Fig.1) and ‘Falling’ (Fig.2). This gives an attractive lilt, which is an important characteristic of this song.

The ‘Carol of Skiddaw Yowes’ is sung quietly with the dynamic never rising above mezzo-piano (mp). Each stanza ends pianissimo (pp). The accompaniment reflects the relatively simple nature of the song melody. This piano part is largely chordal, often based on parallel first inversion triads, supported by a rocking bass. Dissonance is mild with little beyond added 6^th and major 7^th chords. There are virtually no rests. 

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. 

 

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.