The dance and tune were transcribed in 1971 by Mrs Esme Francis, the Honorary Harpist for the Cornish Gorseth. In 2009 she described the circumstances: “A neighbour of mine, farmer John Williams, who lived at Boscreggan Farm,Nanquido, described the Newlyn Reel Dance tome in 1971. He remembered travelling to Newlyn on a horse and cart when he was a child and seeing it danced by the fishermen there. This would have been the early 1900s. He would bring forth the tune in his gruff voice, and demonstrate the steps as he remembered them.”
Newlyn Reel as danced and played by Cornish Dance group Asteveryn for the Lowender Peran festival in 2002:
Newlyn Reel as a social dance.
This tune and dance struck me as particularly unusual. On closer inspection it would seem that music and dance have similarities Kletzmer.
This strikes me as if the Jewish community living in Penzance 18th-19th century may have had some part to play in this tradition.
This would be a wonderful addition to the story of the Newlyn Reel. I suppose the only way that we could be sure is if there were written records of Kletzmer music played by the Jewish Community from this period. I am sure that some of the folk bands playing for Cornish dancing would love to add a tune from Kletzmer tradition as part of their set for this dance. There are other tunes like this in Cornish tradition – look for the Lark / An Awhesyth elswhere in the archive it has an interesting history and a group called Lyonesse did a brillinat recording of in the 1970s.
This is partly speculation, but it’s probably as valid as many of the other ‘explanations’ of the origin of the tune that I’ve heard!
Essentially, I suspect that the simplest explanation is that the tune metamorphosed from the Dorian m0de to a conventional minor scale. That was by no means unusual when traditional tunes – particularly songs – were transcribed by ‘trained musicians’ who hadn’t had the modal character of much traditional music explained to them, and seemed to find it impossible to believe that the tune didn’t fit on the major/minor scales they saw as normal! What would be good would be to find a second, completely independent source for the tune, whether it is in one of the countries of these islands or much further afield.
When I play the tune solo on the fiddle, for the last two or three decades I’ve usually played it in G dorian (G, A Bb, C, D, Eb, Fnatural, G): that fits quite naturally, even for a fiddle player who doesn’t usually shift position!
Thanks Chris that makes sense.