Thomas Hardy's The Oxen with singers скачать в хорошем качестве

Thomas Hardy's The Oxen with singers

This is Hardy's wonderfully romantic Christmas poem The Oxen about the rustic legend that on Christmas eve all the cattle go down on their knees in homage to the baby Jesus. I am reading the poem and the Cautley Carollers are singing an arrangement taught to us by Paul Guppy - who wrote the arrangement - at one of our folk carol weekend workshops. We have gathered in the hallway at Whernside Manor in Dentdale where we were guests of Lord and Lady Johnson. (This video was filmed by Peter Howe.) ""Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel, "In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so'"