#TradSongTues 4th December - Winter Songs

This is a series of posts about the #TradSongTues project, run by various people at the University of Sheffield. Every week I've been recording a song for the theme, sharing it and talking about it. Come and play on Twitter!

I had a panic yesterday because I couldn't think of anything, but then remembered this song existed. Here's the White Shepherd, written by Mike O'Connor.

I try and avoid singing songs that were written fairly recently for TradSongTues - mainly because it feels like it's cheating for something called TradSongTues to do non-traditional material, but I like this one a lot. Mike apparently wrote this because he was chatting to a scottish shepherd who said something like "Won't be long until the White Shepherd comes again", because the snow apparently herds sheep exceptionally well1.

I learned it from the Sheffield Folk Chorale, and it's been a constant in our repertoire since I joined in 2011. Of the 7 winter seasons I've been there for, we've sung this in at least 4 of them2.

  1. There's also the fact I can relate a lot to someone saying something and that immediately being the basis for a song. Blinded by Devotion had exactly the same thing. ↩︎

  2. We also did it at Cheltenham Folk Festival outside of winter if I remember correctly. That was weird. ↩︎