Ryb an Avon As played by Cam Kernewek at Lowender Peran 1991.
As played by Francis Bennett January 2024, part of a series of play-through’s of Cornish Tunes aimed at promoting and enabling players of all abilities to improve their knowledge of Cornish music. Courtesy of Sounds Like Cornwall Today
Notes
In 1905 the Rev Quintrell sent George Gardiner, an academic folk song collector, the music score for a nameless tune he had collected from a J Boaden of Cury near Helston.[i] Gardiner in turn sent this to a fellow collector, Lucy Broadwood, who found that the melody was a very good match to the lyrics of a song called “I love my love” and drew the conclusion that this must be its original and correct title.[ii] Anyone listening to the lyrics of “Clementine” sung to the tune of the hymn “Bread of Heaven” will realise that such a deduction is not well supported. But Gardiner and Broadwood did succeed in making a very beautiful tune widely accessible by associating it with the words of “I Love My Love” and it reached a wide audience through Holst’s military band arrangement.[iii] It was subsequently reclaimed for Cornwall in 1975 by Tony Snell who wrote lyrics in Cornish for it and renamed it “Ryb An Avon”.
Notes
[i] George B Gardiner Manuscripts, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil Sharp House, Regents Park Road, London
[ii] Lucy Broadwood, Maid of Bedlam, Journal of the Folk Song Society Vol 2 1905 – 1906 no 7, p. 93
[iii] Gustav Holst, Second Suite in F for Military Band (op.28, No2), Movement 2, “Song without words- I’ll love my Love” composed 1911 (London, Boosey & Hawkes, 1984).
[iv] See also Tom Goskar’s article in Cornish Trad: Ryb An Avon – the Cornish roots of Maid in Bedlam and Gustav Holst’s I Love My Love.
For more about Cornish Session Tunes
See Cornish Session Tunes Project
Racca: Cornish Tunes for Cornish Sessions Project 1995-97
Fooch 1 & 2 Favourite Cornish Session and Dance Tunes – Neil Davey