Rachel Walker and Aaron Jones - The Wild Rowans

Two of traditional Scottish music’s most celebrated names, Walker and Jones reunite for their second collaboration and a collection of twelve from the canon sung in both English and Gaelic, the duo augmented here and there by Duncan Lyall on double bass and moog, award-winning cellist Alice Allen and Nathon Jones on resonator guitar.

They open with the simple fingerpicked and piano arrangement of the Irish lament Jimmy Mo Mhìle Stòr (Jimmy, A Thousand Times My Treasure) from whence the title comes. Sharing verses and alternating between sung in both English and Gaelic, it tells how, her lover at sea, in a bid to avoid her parents marrying her off a young maid flees to the wild rowans to await his return, the translation from Irish to Scottish Gaelic being by Seonag Monk.

Sung by Jones, Lough Erne is, with echoey guitar, a brooding love song in which our narrator meets and seeks to persuade her to come away with him. Then, arranged for piano, watery guitar and Walker singing in Gaelic with Jones harmonising on the refrain, Cùl do Chinn is another lost love lament as she recalls spending a cold Christmas night sitting with him at a peat-stack on a cold Christmas night, her love now away in Canada.

A more familiar choice, Jones on cittern, Bonny Light Horseman gets a duetted, lilting, slowly swaying treatment. Following this the cittern-sparkling I Am A Youth is Jones’ homage to early influences Andy Irvine and Paul Brady, infused with the emotion of spending long periods on the road and away from his loved ones.

Returning to piano, Walker’s pure, soaring, airy voice works its magic on the wistful Cumha Iain Ghairbh (Lament for John Garve MacLeod), composed by the sister of Iain Garbh Ratharsair when he was drowned crossing the Minch. Back on familiar ground, Jones accompanies himself on guitar for When First I Went To Caledonia, a traditional from Cape Breton about the Caledonia Coal Mines in Glace Bay, the Number Three in the lyrics being one of the pits.

It’s back to shared vocals and four part harmonies for folk ballad, Annan Water, their reworking of the Nic Jones adaptation of the tragic tale of a lover drowning trying to cross the river to his true love.

Composed by Dòmhnall Caimbeul , a shepherd from the Kingussie area in the mid-19th century, Duanag a Chìobair (The Shepherd’s Ballad) is Walker’s nod to the Gaelic traditional singers who inspired her as a youth, Jones’s minimal circling fingerpicking providing accompaniment as she tells of the loneliness of a shepherd who wishes to return to his sweetheart in Rannoch.

There’s many different variants of the Scottish ballad about a beggar who attracts the attention of the daughter of the house where he comes looking for charity, he rejecting her and she roughing up her appearance until he accepts. But, with a somewhat sprightly musical note sung by Jones, Beggarman would seem to follow the version by Aberdeenshire ballad singer Lizzy Higgins as The Beggar Man.

Walker singing in Gaelic and Jones in English (then both in English at the end), the five-minute plus Dòmhnall Òg (Young Donald) is their piano arranged, cello tinted setting of Marbhrann do Dhòmhnall Mòr Ògn, an elegy to Donald MacMartin-Cameron, the property manager of the Huntly and Gordon estates in Lochaber during the early part of the 18th century and a renowned marksman.

Featuring resonator guitar, he on lead and she harmonising, they end with the cascading notes of the traditional Scottish love ballad Broom O’ The Cowdenknowes, another song involving shepherds, the title a reference to the Scotch Broom, a vibrant yellow flower and Cowdenknowes, a Scottish barony east of the Leader Water in Berwickshire, and a sterling conclusion to an album that ranks with the best traditional releases of the year.