Brilliant! I’ve sung Parra Hearn (it means “Curing Pilchards”) with a raucous group of fellow Cornish students on a pub crawl around Penzance, but hadn’t heard The Mermaid of Zennor. Thanks for those.
Now here are a couple of historic ones, including one that’s only recently been rediscovered! First, please all stand for the Cornish national anthem, Bro Goth Agan Tasow (“Land of Our Fathers”)…
Full lyrics and translation here.
(And yes, if you’re Welsh, you already know the tune. We nicked it. Respectfully, of course.)
This next one unfortunately I don’t have a video for, as I believe it’s never been recorded — it’s called Can Palores (“Song of the Chough”), apparently written by Cornish bard Dr Ralph Dunstan, probably in the 1920s or early '30s. The manuscript of it was discovered in the Morrab Library in Penzance just a couple of months ago and given its first modern performance earlier this month by Cornish choir Keur Heb Hanow! Here’s the story, with an image of the manuscript along with the words and translation: A musical discovery at the Morrab Library
The background to the song is the legend of King Arthur. According to the Cornish version of the tale, when Arthur was mortally wounded in his last battle, his spirit was transformed into the chough — a black bird with its legs and beak stained red from the blood that Arthur shed on the battlefield. Choughs were in decline at the time this song was written, and they disappeared from Cornwall’s cliffs altogether in the 1970s, but since 2001 they’ve been nesting there again and expanding their range. So when you see a chough in Cornwall, you know that King Arthur is still watching over his kingdom!
(More information on Cornish choughs from the RSPB and the National Trust.)
EDIT: I’ve just searched further and found a more extensive write-up about Can Palores, which includes the rest of the verses — it turns out it’s Dunstan’s setting of a song by Robert Morton Nance, the second Grand Bard of Cornwall, from the end of his play An Balores (“The Chough”). This website for traditional Cornish songs gives the full lyrics, the background story and a clearer transcription of the music! Can Palores — Song of the Chough
I genuinely got shivers listening to Bro Goth Agan Tasow. Lovely. And I think it’s OK, after all we let them nick the Oggy Oggy Oggy chant!
My dad managed to get some nice photos of some choughs recently, he was telling me they’re really coming back, which is amazing.
Also the Men are Singing link is amazing. Not wanting to get too political here (bit of a rarity for me, ha), but I absolutely love the lyrics and really identify with “Cornwall inspires me, yet frustrates and embarrasses me in equal measures”. When both my homeland of Cornwall and my current home of Wales voted for Brexit, I felt like I didn’t have a place any more. Incredible to see that reflected in Cornish language music, if that makes sense.
Update on Can Palores (Song of the Chough) in my previous post above. Pol Hodge (one of the creators of SSiCornish!) has written a short article about the song on the Go Cornish website. You can read it in either Cornish or English by clicking the button beside the text.
It includes Pol’s new lyrics to the tune of the original song, in which he celebrates the return of the chough to historic nesting places around the coast of Cornwall. In the original play from which the song comes, An Balores (The Chough) by Robert Morton Nance, the death of a chough is presented as a metaphor for the death of the Cornish language, so you can see the same symbolism in the new version — the chough is alive again in Cornwall and so is the language!
I like how Pol concludes the article:
Mes hemm yw arwodh a dhiskwedh bos Kernewek fest yn few. Ilow ha geryow ogas kansbledhen koth a vew arta. An kanow o kenys arta ha martesen gwell yw ages an kynsa prys.
Nyns yw marow Myghtern Arthur.
But this is a sign that ‘Kernewek’ (Cornish) is very much alive. Music and words almost a century old live again. These songs sung again and perhaps better than the first time.
King Arthur is not dead.
(Meanwhile, as an Aussie with Cornish ancestry, I was thrilled to see the gum trees (eucalyptus) front and centre in the photo of the Morrab Library, but that’s just me… )
More Cornish sheet music! Here’s an interview with Hilary Coleman, who runs a community choir, the Red River Singers, performing Cornish folk songs in both English and Cornish. At the end of the page there are PDFs of three of their songs with the lyrics and music. I’ve sung them before with Cornish language groups and they’re lots of fun!
How about that — only the other day I was wondering if and how “Jingle Bells” could be translated into Kernewek, and here it is…
Unfortunately only a karaoke version, but if you love singing and Cornish, it’s fun! (You do have to fiddle with the rhythm slightly in a couple of places where the Cornish words have more syllables than the English equivalent, but it still works.)
This is poetry rather than music, but I can’t find a better thread for it — it’s something that was posted on the Cornish Language Fellowship’s Facebook page (I’m not a Facebook user, but I check it out from time to time). Pol Bennett Hodge — that’s Pol who’s the voice of SSiCornish and a few other online resources — has done an excellent Cornish translation of the famous poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley:
Inviktos
A-dhyworth nos a’m kudha vy
Du ‘vel an pytt, kledh dhe dhyghow
Gras dhe dhuwow may hyll bos di
rag ow enev anfethadow.
Yn synsans fell a sirkomstans
na blynchyis vy po kria mes
yn-dann weskansow a happyans
ow fenn yw gosek na dorblegyes.
Dres an le sorr ha dagrow ma,
y teuth di mes euth a’n skeusek
ha hwath brag bledhenyow a wra
kavos, ha’m kavos anownek.
Ny vern yn hwir tynnder yetys
rol kargys gans kessydhans krev,
yth ov an mester a’m tenkys.
Yth ov an kapten a’m enev.
(Here’s the original poem in English — Pol’s translation is very, very close, almost word for word. Ober marthys da (brilliant job)!!)
Hemm yw splann - this is a great thread on Cornish language music/bands whilst searching for Cornish vocalists
I’m in a band called Mamvro that sings mainly in Cornish. We were around in the 90’s but have reformed a couple of years ago. Our singer/bassist organised Fest Kernewek last summer (unfortunately we weren’t able to do one this year for obvious reasons)
But here is a link to an old song of ours I’ve been reworking over the last month or so if anyone fancies a listen.
I’ve sung Parra Hearn (it means “Curing Pilchards”) with a raucous group of fellow Cornish students on a pub crawl around Penzance, but hadn’t heard The Mermaid of Zennor. Thanks for those.
Respectfully, of course.)
