Ca’ Hawkie
Traditional Northumbrian; Used by permission of The Sage Gateshead
Northumberland is a border county (next to Scotland) and very rural. Once, the wealth of the families in this region was measured by the number of cattle they had. This song is about Hawkie, pronounced ‘Hackie’ – a cow, or ‘coo’, as they say in Northumberland, who is stuck on the far side of a ‘burn’, or stream, and is too ‘sweir’ (shy) to cross the ‘wattor’ (water), to come and be milked.
