Open downloadable pdf file:Jan_Knuckey

Brenda Wootton Singing Jan Knuckey:

Dialect terms :

Bal – Mine Chelern – Children

Fetch’d es coos – found his voice (Coos is derived from the Cornish Kows- to speak)

Fooch – To throw out

Durns – Door Posts

NB “Screech” and “Dander” are used in the English sense in this song, in Cornish dialect “screech means to cry rather than cry out as here, and “dander” is dandruff.

Writing under the pseudonym ” Uncle Jan Trenoodle”, William Sandys included Jan Knuckey in his “Specimens of Cornish Provincial Dialect” published in 1846 as a Dialect narrative of 23 verses but without a melody. By 1887 it was known to Cornish migrants to South Africa and had acquired a melody and chorus.   Thomas Collette (a mine captain, who had worked in South Africa) communicated a verse and chorus to Dunstan in 1932 who published it in his Cornish Dialect and Folk Songs. By 1972, it was part of Brenda Wootton’s repertoire and continues to the present day as a party piece with a communal chorus for dialect singers. The version given here is that sung by Paul Holmes for the An Daras Cornish Folk Arts Project in 2007.