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Cornwall Heritage Trust / Lowender Peran

Cornish Songs in Schools Project

Community singing, the Cornish “Shout”, is an important and popular part of Cornwall’s cultural heritage. This pack is designed to help teachers engage children with Cornwall’s singing heritage.

Cornish Songs in Schools Resources Pack

There are eight songs in this pack, some are recently composed and some have been in the Cornish singing tradition for generations.

Each song in this pack has a recording of children singing; a recording of just the accompaniment for children to sing along with; words that can be projected on to a screen; music score with guitar chords; and music score with keyboard accompaniment. The teacher can choose which medium or combination best suit their children.

Camborne Hill

Traditional

Camborne hill celebrates the story of Richard Trevithick and the invention of the steam engine. The exact origins of the song are not clear but it certainly travelled the world with Cornish miners and it appears in a collection called “Songs of the Butte Miner” published in “Western Folklore” in 1950. It was recorded in 1946 from the singing of a Cornishman called Richard Guest who had mined at Butte, Montana, for some 30 years. It was not identified by the 19th century folk song collectors in Cornwall but was clearly popular by the time Peter Kennedy recorded it in 1956.

Children Singing

Accompaniment Only

Cornish Lads

Roger Bryant

Cornish Lads was composed by Roger Bryant in 1994 and inspired by closure of the last tin mines in Cornwall. It was featured in “Cry of Tin” a music drama and CD by Cornwall Songwriters in 2000.

Children Singing

Accompaniment Only

Cornwall My Home

Harry Glasson

Born in 1951 in Cornwall, Harry left school at 15, and joined The Royal Navy, going to sea for the first time two days after his 16th birthday, barely more than a boy. In a woodwork class at school, Harry hand crafted his first guitar and he took it with him to sea, a fond memory of the home he had left behind. This was the place that he really began to fall in love with music, poetry and the effect words could have. Writing mostly poetry while at sea, it wasn’t until he returned to shore that he began to explore folk music and how story could be told through lyrics.

Children Singing

Accompaniment Only

Lamorna

Traditional

Lamorna started life as a Broadside called “Down to Pomona”. Pomona was a nineteenth Century Zoological park in Manchester with a notoriously expensive admission fee intended to discourage working class people, thus the twist in the last verse. It is thought that it was provided with a tune and a Cornish twist in the early 1900s by Charles Lee a novelist specialising in stories about Cornwall. He stayed in small Cornish village communities for long periods when researching his books and was a recognised expert in Cornish dialect. Certainly it was a well established part of the Cornish singing repertoire by the 1950s.

Children Singing

Accompaniment Only

Little Lize

Traditional

This song originated as a Charles H Sheffer composition “Liza Loves You” for a show entitled “The Wrong Girl” that toured across the USA in 1885. The lyrics were revised by the Deep River Boys and in the form of “Honey Honey” used as the B side to their 1950s hit single “Deep River”. It became part of the repertoire of Cornish close harmony group the “Joy Boys” in 1955 and has since been adopted into the Cornish community / “shout” singing tradition with yet further variation of the lyrics.

Children Singing

Accompaniment Only

The Sweet Nightingale

Traditional

The Sweet Nightingale first enters the written record in 1761 in the popular musical by Isaac Bickerstaff and Thomas Arne Called the “Sailors Return”. It follows a common theme and was almost certainly plagiarised from an older folk song. We do not know when it was absorbed into Cornish singing tradition, but a much altered version of the words was noted from John Stocker, a Cornish miner working in Zell, in Germany in 1854 by James Dixon and Robert Bell. Rev Baring Gould published the version of the melody we know today in Songs and Ballads of the West in 1892. He was sent a version with the music by “E. F. Stevens, Esq” of St. Ives but makes clear that it was popular throughout Cornwall at this time.

Children Singing

Accompaniment Only

Trelawny

Rev Robert Stephen Hawker

Trelawny was written by Rev Robert Stephen Hawker in 1824. It was inspired by the expression “Here’s twenty thousand Cornishmen will know the reason why” together with the story of Bishop Jonathon Trelawny who was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1688. It was published anonymously in a Plymouth Newspaper in 1826 and quickly captured the imagination of Cornish people the world over to become recognised as the Cornish National Anthem.

Children Singing

Accompaniment Only

Song for Cornwall

Harry Glasson

Born in 1951 in Cornwall, Harry left school at 15, and joined The Royal Navy, going to sea for the first time two days after his 16th birthday, barely more than a boy. In a woodwork class at school, Harry hand crafted his first guitar and he took it with him to sea, a fond memory of the home he had left behind. This was the place that he really began to fall in love with music, poetry and the effect words could have. Writing mostly poetry while at sea, it wasn’t until he returned to shore that he began to explore folk music and how story could be told through lyrics.

Children Singing

Accompaniment Only

Notes on the songs for teachers

The songs in this pack are all special to Cornwall. Some have identified composers and lyrics that celebrate Cornish identity; some have been absorbed into folk singing tradition from sources outside of Cornwall and substantially changed. It is important to understand folk tradition as a continuing process rather than something fixed and historic. The lyrics and melodies associated with the songs will change over time and there may be several different versions in circulation.

The Project

This was a joint project between Cornwall Heritage Trust and the Lowender Peran festival. Workshops were provided for schools to introduce children to the songs and prepare them for a concert performance. At the concert each school led the community singing with words projected on a screen to help the audience join in. This concert was recorded live in order to provide the tracks used in the pack.

For more information about Cornish community singing and folk traditions see:

Shout Kernow: Celebrating Cornwall’s pub songs
Hilary Coleman& Sally Burley, Francis Boutle Pubishers, www.francisboutle.co.uk

Gwerin: Folk Song Dance and Identity in Cornwall
Merv Davey, Francis Boutle Pubishers, www.francisboutle.co.uk

An Daras: Cornish Folk Arts Project: www.an-daras.com

The Schools

Wadebridge Primary Academy
The Bishops School, Newquay
Perranporth CP School
Newlyn East Learning Academy

The Singers

Oll an Gwella, Newquay
Keith and Clarinda Truscott, Bodmin

Musical Lead

Roger Pinsent

Project Lead

Merv Davey

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