Sheep Season by Mellow Candle, Album Swaddling Songs, 1971

Winding up a hillside where the shepherds roam
Counting their flocks in the gloaming
Shining the sea, winking its light to the froth
and the foam.

Chilling the air with his shady tread,
On came the wolf with surprise
Filling his eyes with soft silent creatures soon to
be dead.

Hurry the shepherd man wizened and olden
Go and wave your staff at him
He has come to bury you for claiming his fold.

Stillness came into the misty meadows
Down from the banks to the woodland
Clouds gather in skies, giving their rains into
mountains to flow.

Hurry the shepherd man wizened and olden
Go and wave your staff at him
He has come to bury you for claiming his fold.

This pastoral song by this Irish group seems to refer simply to the difficult life of a shepherd. We don’t know what the artist had in mind, but it could be interpreted as an allegory: It’s a warning for the eradication of natural life and an urge to fight against it. Wolf could be the urbanizing/industrial monster who came to claim shepherd’s land and made him an alienated worker in a plant which will be built upon his open green fields.

You can hear this beautiful song and three more from the same album in my space