My Father had a Horse

Recorded from the singing of Jim Thomas by Ralph Dunstan and published in Cornish Dialect and Folk Song, Jordan’s Bookshop, Truro 1932

“At the age of 79, Jim Thomas was the first person to be made a Bard of Gorsedh Kernow in the inaugural ceremony of 1928. He took the Bardic name Tas Cambron, Father of Camborne, which hints at the reverence in which he was held. True to Nance’s aspiration to wrest Cornwall’s cultural heritage from the world of academia Thomas’s formal education was limited. He worked as a miner abroad in his younger years and returned to Camborne to spend 30 years as a postman before retirement. “

“Jim Thomas had been a point of contact for folk song and dance collector Cecil Sharp when he visited Cornwall in 1913 and 1914. Although only acknowledged by Sharp as ‘one of his singers,’ Thomas was also a folklore researcher in his own right. He introduced Sharp to traditional singers from Camborne, Redruth and Helston and personally provided him with 15 of the 66 songs taken down in Cornwall. Three of Thomas’s songs were arranged and published in the Old Cornwall journal and eight were included in Ralph Dunstan’s Cornish dialect and folk songs. He contributed a further 14 articles to the journal on games, rhymes and folklore and was often cited by other contributors“. ( A Uniquely Cornish Concept)1 

1Peter Thomas, Andrew Langdon & Merv Davey.  Editor:  Peter Thomas, A Uniquely Cornish Concept:   the Story of the ‘Old Cornwall’ Movement 1920-2020. (St Agnes, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, 2023)