Music and Folk Traditions in the Clay Country

At one time the southern skyline of central Cornwall was dominated by the “Cornish Alps”, the white topped peaks and sugar loaf shapes of the clay tips. Although the large tips have long since been levelled out and terraced for safety reasons, the area remains characterised by the lagoons, spoil tips and massive open cast mining. It is an ever changing and, in a sense, very new landscape compared to areas of Cornwall where centuries old tin workings remain in evidence. The Clay Country is nevertheless rich in stories and folk traditions together with the music, songs and dances that go with them.

Picrous Night was celebrated by the tinners of Blackmore Stannary on the second Thursday before Christmas and involved the retelling of the story of Jan Sturtridge and how he was “Piskie Laden”. Today St Picrous night is celebrated at the Kings Arms in Luxulyan. The story is retold at the beginning of the evening and leads naturally to a traditional Cornish “Shout” or singing session.

Jobbing Music and Musicians: The author Walter White visited St Austell whilst researching his 19^th century travelogue “A Londoners Walk to the Land’s End” and describes a clarinettist and drummer leading a procession of combatants for a wrestling contest. This is a good example of jobbing musicians providing music for community events. Michael Harris was one such musician who played in the chapel band at St Stephen and also turned his hand to dances tunes such as “Stony Steps” and “Not too Young to Marry Yet”. In Par we find the dancing master John Old who taught the families of the Clay country industrialists the finer country house arts of music and dance. One of his tunes was “Forty Thieves” a dance version of a tune that appears elsewhere as the carol “The First Good Joy That Mary Had” and the rather more secular  “Old Grey Duck”.

 

 

A series of postcards provide us with some wonderful images of two itinerant entertainers from the Clay Country in the early 1900s, “Harry and Carrie”.

 

 

 

 

The piper serenading the Streets of St Austell from the top of the Church tower deserves mention although he or she predates the formation of the Clay Country as we know it today by several hundred years. We know little about the carving of the piper except that it presumably dates to the building of the church in 1500 making it one of the oldest depictions of bagpipes in Cornwall. Carvings of pipers further east can be identified with people and events but we have no way of knowing whether the St Austell piper was inspired by a local performer, someone further afield or indeed creativity on the part of the sculptor.

 

 

A step dance called “Cock in Britches”, or the “Weedin Paddle” was recalled by Mrs Rouse of Treesmill, in the 1980s. The dance and the song that goes with it describes the story of the corn from sowing to harvest with particular reference to clearing the weeds that restricted the crop like the fighting cock was restrained by “britches”. On the eastern edge of the Clay Country the dance was done as part of the “Crying the Neck” ceremony once a familiar part of farming life which marked the harvest and turn of the seasons and since revived by the Old Cornwall Societies.

Villages in the Clay Country have occasionally “disappeared” as new workings are developed, or old ones extended. One such village was Trelawsa to the north of St Stephen where a carpenter called Joe Jago was known for step dancing on a table. Sadly, the dance, like the village, has long been lost but Cornish Dance group “Hevva” have choreographed a tribute as part the Clay Country Music project 2022

A song from St Austell called “We Be” captures the tradition of the travelling tailors known as “Whip The Cats”.  Elsewhere in Cornish folk tradition tailors’ songs are associated with step dances. Clay Country folk singer and songwriter Richard Trethewey has arranged “We Be” with the traditional lyrics set to a new tune and incorporates the sound of a scoot dancer as part of a musical conversation with the singer and lyrics.

Broom dances were one of the dance games enjoyed at what has perhaps been the strongest folk tradition in the Clay Country, the Tea Treats. Tea Treats were popular throughout Cornwall in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries and part of Cornish Chapel Culture but a tradition that the Clay Country embraced and made its own. As well as swinging the broom handle under each leg in turn the dancer would lay the broom on the floor and step dance around and across it. A fun game for children but also for adults to show off agility and strength as the music or song speeded up.

Dances games like “The Gookow” and the “Millers Dance” were also popular at Tea Treats and continue to provide fun at Cornish barn dances. The Serpent Dance is well documented at Tea Treats throughout Cornwall but the villages of Rescorla, Molinnis, Roche, Withiel and St Wenn have their own distinct form of this called the Snail Creep. It involves a long procession of couples, rather than a single line as in the Serpent, and is led by two people holding up branches – the tentacles of the snail. The Snail Creep was revived by the Rescorla Festival in 2007.