Adam Hag Eva as sung by Newlyn East School at Lowender Peran
Open downloadable pdf file: Adam_hag_Eva-Adam and_Eve-
A children’s nursery rhyme that dates from the British Civil War. The tune was supposed to be that of the Stratton Church chimes but it is not the same as that played by the current chimes set up in 1843 by George Wilkins. It was sent to Rev Sabine Baring Gould in 1891 by another folk song collector called Lucy Broadwood who came across it in Cornwall.
The reference to Peter the miller is topical allusion to the popular distrust in millers when supplies of flour and bread were critical.The reference to Oliver Cromwell is explained in Murry’s Handbook for Devon and Cornwall:
“Lord Exmouth, when captain Pellew, fought and won one of the most brilliant of single ship actions with a crew of Cornish miners. At an earlier period it shone forth as conspicuously. In the great rebellion, the mainstay of the throne was in the west, where the Cornish generals were called “the wheels of Charles’s wain”.. ”. Indeed, the loyalty that was then manifested has been handed down to our own times in the following quaint nursery Song:
I`ll bore a hole in Crummels noase
And put therin a string
And laid en up and down the town
For murderin’ Charles the King “
Sources
Sabine Baring Gould, Personal Copy manuscript vol 2. Page 230, song no 239
Lucy E Broadwood. English County Songs, p176, 177
Merv Davey, Hengan, Dyllansow Truran, Redruth, 1983 p26
Murry`s Handbook for Devon and Cornwall 1859: (Introduction XLIX)