Cornish Girls played at the Benbow Cornish Session December 2022
(part of a set with Hard Rock Miner and Ewon an Mor)
Notes
Arthur Pascoe’s Cornish Girls from St Neot in East Cornwall circa 1900 communicated to Inglis Gundry in 1966 Gundry, Inglis, Canow Kernow, (St Ives, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies & Soundpost Publications, 1966 ) p. 49
It is similar to the eighteenth century dance tune Trip to Truro and belongs to the family of tunes Bronson identifies as The Nutting Girl. ( Bertram H Bronson, The Traditional tunes of the child ballads with their texts, according to the extant records of Great Britain and America. (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.1953).
Versions of the The Nutting Girl were collected by Rev Sabine Baring Gould and it was apparently also known to one of Edward Bunting’s “Old Irish Harpers”.
Travelling tunes.
Traditional melodies travel widely and appear in many variations. Sometimes a community makes a particular variation of a tune their own by connecting it with a song, dance or custom as happened in Cornwall with Cornish Girls and Trip To Truro. Rev Sabine Baring Gould collected the tune with a song called the “Nutting Girl” in the late 19th century from singers around western Dartmoor, The Tamar Valley and Menhenniot. It is interesting to compare the versions:
See Cornish Session Tunes Project
For more about Cornish Session Tunes
Racca: Cornish Tunes for Cornish Sessions Project 1995-97
Fooch 1 & 2 Favourite Cornish Session and Dance Tunes – Neil Davey