The Point March is rooted in Cornish Tea Treat tradition. Tea Treats were a popular entertainment in Cornwall during the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. As well as traditional Cornish fare such as saffron buns and splits with jam and cream there were games and dances, but the key feature was the music played throughout by the local band. The Cornish musical scholar and historian, Dr Ralph Dunstan, was a bandsman playing for just such events in his youth in the mid nineteenth century. He included arrangements of some of these Teat Treat tunes in his collection “Lyver Canow Kernewek – The Cornish Song book” published in 1929. This publication was part of a wider Celtic revival in Cornwall and served to keep these tunes within Cornish instrumental.

Point March as recalled by Ralph Dunstan:

 

 

Dunstan, Ralph, ed. The Cornish Song Book, Lyver Canow Kernewek. (London: Reid Bros Ltd 1929) p136