Ca' the yowes
Traditional (Scottish), arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams
Recording
Holst Singers, Stephen Layton, Ian Bostridge (tenor)
- Album
- Vaughan Williams: Over hill, over dale
- Year
- 1995
- Length
- Period
- Folk song
- Listen
Painting
Jean-François Millet
The Little Shepherdess, 1868–72
The piece
A Scots song of a shepherd calling the ewes to the knolls by the Cluden Water near Dumfries, with words by Robert Burns after an earlier song attributed to Isabel Pagan. Vaughan Williams arranged it in 1922 for tenor solo and mixed chorus.
The recording
Ian Bostridge sings the solo with the Holst Singers under Stephen Layton, recorded in February 1995 at St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead, for Hyperion. BBC Music Magazine called the album "masterly, but also supremely musical".
Other recordings
Laudibus under Michael Brewer recorded it in 1998 for Hyperion, with Mark Dobell as soloist.