One theme of autumn equinox brought to my attention by Gaarik Hamr, grove organizer of the nearby Spirit Valley Protogrove, was that of the return of herders to the village for winter. While lots of herders would have lived in the village and taken care of the animals close to home, others could and in some cases still do graze their animals in more remote places, and return only when the harsh winter weather makes staying out of town dangerous. This song focuses on that aspect of the life of those who have maintained the line of domestic animals for thousands of years.
Musically, this is pretty straightforward stuff in the key of D. However, for the recording, you'll be noticing the featuring of an instrument I've been learning over the pandemic break, namely penny whistle. This deceptively simple-looking flute is just a tube with a plastic mouthpiece and 7 holes, but playing it well requires a lot of breath control and real discipline to get your fingers firmly covering each hole to get good sound from it. More sophisticated players will also take advantage of partially covering the holes to get the notes that aren't on the D-major scale or even slide from note to note.
All works are copyright by yours truly, but may be distributed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0. That means, in short, you can use them yourself and your grove, and play the song to your heart's content both in private and in public, but must give credit where credit is due, and if you're planning on selling something involving this song we need to talk about that first.
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