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While Shepherds Were Watching

[ Roud 16898 ; Ballad Index RcWSWWTF ; Mudcat 173751 ; trad.]

George Dunn sang both the well known While Shepherds Watched and the variant While Shepherds Were Watching at home at Quarry Bank, Staffordshire in a recording made by Roy Palmer on 14 June 1971. Both versions were included in 2002 on Dunn’s Musical Traditions anthology Chainmaker. This second variant is sufficiently different from the usual that Steve Roud gave it a number of its own, 16898. Bill Leader and Roy Palmer recorded it for a second time on 4 December 1971; this was included in 1998 on the Topic anthology You Lazy Lot of Bone-Shakers (The Voice of the People Volume 16). Rod Stradling noted on Dunn’s album:

This is, of course, an example—albeit an unusual one—of While Shepherds Watched. George, who learned this not in church but from his father, pointed out that in the second line of the first verse he should have sung “a great light” rather than “a great noise”. Steve Roud feels that it is sufficiently different (the metre is changed and it isn’t a straight paraphrase of Nahum Tate’s ‘standard’ text) to have its own number and, as far as he and Ian Russell know, it is unique to George Dunn.

Coope Boyes & Simpson, Fi Fraser, Jo Freya and Georgina Boyes sang While Shepherds Were Watching in 2006 on their No Masters album Voices at the Door, and Coope Boyes & Simpson sang it in 2008 on their No Masters album with Michael Morpungo, On Angel Wings. They noted on the first album:

A carol from the repertoire of George Dunn (1887–1975) of Quarry Bank, Staffordshire. Although Mr Dunn got many of the popular songs he sang from newspapers, broadsheets and ‘lucky bags’ (mixed bags of sweets which at the time had song texts printed on them), the traditional songs he knew were mainly learned orally from his father who sang to the family after tea, by lamplight. “Father,” the children would request, “sing we a song. Sing we a song.” This very human account of the shepherds’ experience of the Nativity appears to be unique to the Dunn family.

We are very grateful to Roy Palmer for help with additional information about George Dunn and his songs.

Andy Turner sang George Dunn’s While Shepherds Were Watching as the 15 December 2025 entry of A Folk Song a Week.

Lyrics

George Dunn sings While Shepherds Were Watching

While shepherds were watching their flocks by the night
There came a great noise which gave them a fright.
“Cheer up, faithful shepherds, and be not afraid,
Cheer up, cheer up, cheer up,
Faithful shepherds, and be not afraid.”

’Twas angels a-shouting on that glorious morn,
A-shouting glad tiding: “The saviour is born;
Is borned of a virgin so meek and so mild,
Our lord, our lord, our lord
And redeemer is now born a child.”

I went to behold him, I asked them his name,
His name It was Jesus; from Bethlehem came.
Let every believer his mercy implore,
And praise, and praise, and praise him
Forever till time be no more.