Lastly, could you tell me more about Cornish Bagpipes? I’ve heard the pairing of the words many times, but not much about their history.
The earliest reference to pipers and bagpipes in Cornwall are found in the Cornish Mystery plays where the piper is told to play for dancing. There are also a number of mediaeval carvings depicting pipers like the one looking down from the church tower here [St. Austell Holy Trinity Church]. The carvings vary, some depict historical persona such as the Minstrels of St Mary’s at Launceston, some are decorative imagery such as the pig piper at St Braddocks. Several of the carvings show pipes with a double chanter which is unusual and quite distinctive. [The chanter is the pipe in a set of pipes that is fingered to play melody]. The carving of a double chanter bagpipe on the bench end at Altarnun Church is very detailed and some makers have reconstructed sets inspired by this detail. These sets tend to be promoted as Cornish Bagpipes and thus the name tends to be associated with double chanter pipes in the mediaeval piping world.
One has to be a bit careful as labelling bagpipes geographically is a modern thing. I doubt very much if the village piper in mediaeval Scotland, Brittany or Cornwall gave much thought to the nationality of their pipes! They were simply playing whatever worked for dancing and to entertain.
Today we play a variety of bagpipes in Cornwall. I have a set of Cornish Double Chanter pipes and they sound wonderful but by their very nature they are not very loud and do not meet the demand for outdoor events and parades such as those of St Piran’s day. I tend to use a Breton Veuze or Great Highland Bagpipe, others play the Gaita, which come from Galicia. These pipes have the advantage of being mass produced modern instruments so that reeds and spare parts are readily available which is not the case for custom mediaeval reconstructions.
The last record we have of pipers in Cornwall is from a late 17th century account book. A piper was paid by a farmer to play for dancing at the end of the harvest. By the nineteenth century bagpipes seem to have been replaced by fiddles.
Out of all your research, is there a tune that has a story that really connected with you?
From a piper’s perspective one tune that resonates is “Constantine”. This was noted in the Old Cornwall Journal as a popular 19th Century “burying song” i.e. lament and it fits particularly well on the pipes. Needless to say I put it to good use when booked as a piper for various events during the First World War commemorations. The most poignant moment had to be playing Constantine for the DCLI’s commemoration of the Battle of the Somme at Bodmin Church in front of a screen showing images of trench warfare.
As I have mentioned previously it is the story of tunes that fascinates me and here it must be ‘Ryb An Avon’ that really “connects” for me. It was sent to Gardiner, one of the famous folk song collectors in 1905, by a Rev Quintrell who had noted it down from a Mr Boaden of Cury near Mullion. Boaden did not provide a name for the tune but Gardiner and other folk song enthusiasts of the time felt that it fitted the words of “I love my love” extraordinarily well and presumed this to be the title of the tune. Rugby club singers will know that the lyrics to Clementine fit the tune of the hymn “Bread of Heaven” extraordinarily well but we accept that this is probably not where the hymn tune came from!
Around 1975, Cornish Bard Tony Snell wrote some verse in Cornish to go with the tune which he called “Ryb an Avon” [By The River]. Under this name the song has been recorded by several bands and was entered for the Pan Celtic Festival in Ireland at one stage. The tune became known under this name in its own right and is popular as an instrumental. Whether the tune’s adoption as “I love my love” is seen as cultural appropriation or simply another example of the way traditional music travels is a matter of judgement. This is perhaps where we came in with this series of interviews. I think we can safely say that we have reclaimed the tune as our own as “Ryb an Avon”.