Shepherd's Hey is one of the best known and most often performed of the early folk song "settings"—arrangements or compositions—with which Grainger was preoccupied between the turn of the century and the beginning of World War I as he pursued dual careers as concert pianist and composer in London. Though he was a meticulous and indefatigable collector of folk song in the field, not only in England but in Denmark and Norway as well—during the same years, incidentally, that Bartók and Kodály were scouring the Transylvanian wilds for folk melody—the tune of Shepherd's Hey had already been collected by Cecil Sharp, dean of the English folk song movement, which Grainger graciously acknowledges, though he had, himself, also heard it "From the playing of the fiddler of the Bidford Morris Dancers (1906)." There is, indeed, a bracing open-air freshness to Grainger's arrangement suggesting the spontaneity of players on the green, though by using four variants as the tune percolates through the instrumental registers (with directions such as "merrily," "chippy," "Bumpingly," or "The top notes as piercing as possible") and emphasizing secondary voices, Grainger works the melody with the abundant yet cunningly unobtrusive resources of the composer's art as he articulates it with the savvy of the born pianist, evident in wide stretches, glissandi, and calls for touch ranging from crackling to caressing. Grainger's chatty note preceding the piano score preserves the memory of a time already vanishing—"Morris Dances are still danced by teams of 'Morris Men' decked out with bells and quaint ornaments to the music of the fiddle or 'the pipe and tabor' (a sort of drum and fife) in several agricultural districts in England...The word 'Hey' denotes a particular figure [i.e., step] in Morris Dancing." As was his practice, Grainger worked sporadically at the piano solo and full orchestra versions of Shepherd's Hey between 1908 and 1913, though a "Room-music" (Grainger's term for chamber music) version for flute, clarinet, horn, concertina, and eight strings was ready by 1909. An arrangement for band was completed in 1918, while a simplified version for piano appeared in 1937, and a final go for two pianos, four hands, was wrapped up in 1947. Perhaps because of the frequent, written-in holding back and quickening, Grainger notes, "This setting is not suitable to dance Morris Dances to." Shepherd's Hey is "Lovingly and reverently dedicated to the memory of Edvard Grieg"—Grainger's friend and mentor—who had died in 1907.

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