The Celto-Cornish movement and the Folk Revival: Competing Speech Communities
Dr Merv Davey. (First published in Cornish Studies 20, ed. Phillip Payton, University of Exeter, 2012)
Introduction
This essay considers two groups of people in Cornwall with competing interpretations of Cornish folk tradition and the identity it represents. The first group is that of the home grown Celto-Cornish movement, which sees local folk tradition as part of Cornwall’s Celtic heritage. The second is that of the British / English folk movement, which understands Cornish tradition as part of a wider English culture tradition and therefore sees no barrier to importing material from England to represent Cornwall. There are three concepts which underpin this discussion: understanding folk tradition as a process rather than stasis; recognising the significance of “lore” in relationship to folk tradition and identity; and the notion of “speech communities” as groups of people with a shared set of understandings and a shared language which reinforces these understandings.
The emergence of “folk” as a genre of popular music and dance in the 1950s compromised long held beliefs about the nature folk tradition and the sanctity of its deep historic origins. Distinctions were drawn between the traditional, and the contemporary written in a style perceived as traditional. Organisations such as the International Folk Music Council replaced the term “folk” with the term “traditional”, “roots” or “ethnic” in order to try and accommodate this. In the latter part of the twentieth century popularly held beliefs about the nature of folk tradition were nevertheless subject to an almost terminal critique by writers such as Harker and Boyse.1 In effect they showed that what was accepted as common sense in folk tradition owed more to the ideas and beliefs of a small group of influential people than historical evidence.
The author has argued that there is a case for separating “folk” as a genre of popular music from “folk tradition” as a social phenomenon.2 This allows for folk tradition to be understood as a process that happens to a tune, a song, a dance or a custom, as it is performed, as it is communicated and as it is understood. Folk tradition is a process that involves both continuity and
change in the structure of the material, the context of its performance and the meaning ascribed to it by those involved. Multiple factors govern this change and the outcomes can seem chaotic and random. It is important to recognise that some are a reflexive response to wider social trends and some changes are the result of careful reflection on the part of the participants. A tradition is an abstract vehicle taking the form of music, a dance, a custom or a combination of all three, that travels through time carrying structures and meanings with it which are modified by, and exchanged for, the new. Thus it is not a question of whether a folk phenomena is traditional or not but where it lies in the traditional process and the extent to which it is owned by a community rather than artistic or commercial interests.
Another dimension which helps us to understand folk tradition is where the performance is located in both a physical and a social sense. Hoerburger suggests that a tradition can be understood as having two existences.3 When an event takes place at a certain time of year in a given place involving a wide section of the community then this can be understood as an original location or existence. The Helston Furry Dance would be an example of this.4 If this dance is then taken out of this context and used or for social dance events / barn dances then this can be understood as a new location or second existence. This does not make the dance any less traditional in the sense that there will continue to be forces that influence change in structure and significance but these forces might have a different emphasis. Likewise a song can be understood as being performed in an original location when sung in the local pub on Saturday night but in a new location when taken into a concert setting where a group of singers lead audience participation. The line between original and second locations will always be a fine one but what is interesting is that in the second location performers are likely to be much more self conscious about what they are performing and why, especially when linked to the expression of identity such as Cornishness.
When folk tradition is considered as a process the narratives that surround it and what people believe or wish to believe provide a social reality that competes with the interpretations of the past. Here it is lore, i.e. what people understand and the beliefs they share, which is as important as any evidence provided by history. The Padstow Mummer’s day provides a good example of this. Following parliamentary censure as a racist event the author undertook a study for Cornish Studies and made the case that the neither the historical origins nor current day practice of the tradition were intended to caricature or demean minority groups.5 Historical research suggested that it evolved from a Cornish Guize Dance 6 tradition but contemporary lore surrounding the festival ranged from it being a fertility rite in the shortest days of winter to the pragmatic suggestion that it was just “party time” and an excuse for fancy dress. A particularly interesting narrative saw it as a celebration to commemorate the rescue of slaves from a ship that visited Padstow. The people of the village blacked their faces to confuse the slavers and release the slaves. There is no historical evidence as yet to support such a narrative but it is belief that is important here not the evidence of history. If this is what is believed about the tradition then it counters the notion that the event is intended to demean minority groups, quite the reverse.
From a sociological perspective, beliefs and narratives can also be understood as part of the discursivity that defines a community. In his study of the relationship between language and power Fairclough uses the term “speech communities” to describe groups of people who share ideological norms and reinforce their world view discursively through use of language.7 Bernard Deacon draws upon Fairclough’s thinking to develop an understanding of identity in Cornwall or to be precise, identities in Cornwall. He suggests that “Both Cornwall and the Cornish people have been and are being discursively constructed in a number of often conflicting ways.”8 The Celto- Cornish movement and the English Folk Revival can be understood as two speech communities with the potential for quite different constructions of identity around Cornish folk traditions. For Fairclough, the issue of power is important when examining speech communities. He suggests that a characteristic of a dominant speech community is the “capacity to naturalize’ ideologies, i.e. win acceptance for them as non-ideological common sense”.9 History may provide the opportunity for interpretations of a Cornish identity other than English but the ideology of a dominant speech community might make it appear common sense that Cornwall should be counted as part of England.
This essay first looks at the relationship between folk tradition and the Celtic world generally. The involvement of the Celto-Cornish movement with folk tradition in Cornwall is then explored together with the advent of the Folk Revival. The discussion that leads from this considers the way in which these two speech communities compete, both for space to perform in and for a sense of authenticity.
Celtic Roots
The introduction of the term “folk” (“Volkslied” – “folk song”) is conventionally attributed to Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 -1803)10, a German Lutheran pastor working in Latvia. Despite Russian and German political and cultural domination, Herder found that the Latvians had retained their
language and an identity as a distinct ethnic group. According to Francmanis, Herder “equated this ethnic community’s popular tradition with its suppressed national consciousness and came to believe that this oral tradition contained the essence, or soul, of the Latvian nation.”11 This captured the imagination of the Romantic Movement and the counter-reaction to the urban, mechanised world of the industrial revolution. It also offered a sense of authenticity for the emergent nationalist ideologies in Europe who saw in folk tradition evidence of the ancient civilisations and culture from which their nations derived.
Authors within Celtic studies such as Ó’Giolláin12, McCann13 and Wood14 show that the Celtic world was part of this movement and that there was, and continues to be, a close symbiosis between folk tradition and Celtic identity. In Scotland this was represented initially by Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian but evolved to become the modern package of bagpipes, kilts and tartans that we
recognise today. The story is similar in Ireland, a good example being that of Bunting and his interweaving of the repertoire of the itinerant 18th Century Irish harpists with the Gaelic language. In Wales we have Morgannwg’s Gorsedd and in Brittany, Villemarquè’s collection of ballads, Barzaz Breizh. As history, these examples have been the subject of scrutiny and deconstruction from the outset but perhaps immortalised more recently in Hobsbawm and Ranger’s seminal work “The Invention of Tradition”.15 As lore, however, they are the expression of a community’s aspirations and the creative way in which the process of tradition and the sense of identity feed off each other.
A strong link between folk traditions and Cornish identity appears throughout the 19th Century. Cornwall’s relationship with the Celtic world is frequently alluded to, from Gilbert’s reference to the Helston Furry as “a specimen of Celtick Music” 16 to the linguistic connections made by Sandys.17
Courtney referred to the linguistic connections but also acknowledged Cornish Celticity with comments like “Cornish people possess in a marked degree all the characteristics of the Celts” 18 and “Like all other Celts, the Cornish are an imaginative and poetical people”.19 Unlike the Celtic world elsewhere this connection, initially at least, does not go as far as recognising the expression of nationality. Dundes suggests that one of the drives to authenticate national ideologies using folk traditions was a feeling of inferiority in relation to dominant cultures.20 Deacon shows that far from having an inferiority complex in the first half on the 19th century the Cornish were constructing a confident, positive self – image and exported this globally on the strength of their industrial expertise.21 Perhaps the Cornish did not need folk tradition to express their identity.
This changed dramatically with the decline of the mining industry in the latter half of the 19th century. For Payton this marks the emergence of a centre/periphery culture where Cornwall and the Cornish became remote and marginalised.22 It is here that we begin to witness the beginnings of a symbiosis between folk tradition and Cornish identity as a distinct nationality, perhaps encouraged, as Dundes suggests, by this sense of marginalisation. Furthermore, Cornwall had a very rich seam of folk tradition to call upon. Deacon shows that the industrial landscape developed in a diffused rural pattern with “the cottages of the miners distributed amongst the small fields, lanes and footpaths filling the spaces between mines and settlements”.23 This left social structures and families relatively intact and provided for continuity of oral folk traditions. It also introduced new experiences and context with which to clothe and embellish the folklore of the past.
The Celto-Cornish movement and Folk Tradition
Henry Jenner (1848 – 1934) is a pivotal figure in the emergence of a Celto–Cornish identity. He positioned the language ready for revival and campaigned for recognition of Cornwall as a Celtic nation. Unlike his counterparts elsewhere in the Celtic world he did not embrace the opportunities that folk tradition offered for the expression of Celticity in Cornwall. His presidential address to the Royal Polytechnic Society in September 1920 was ironically entitled “The Renaissance of Merry England”.24 He uses this title as a device to make the point that Cornwall should not be seen as part of England. He then proceeds to extol the virtues of folk dances, songs and customs as a way of bringing all classes together in order to shield against social unrest or, to put it another way, to maintain the status quo of social structures that privileged certain groups. He did not, however, connect folk tradition with Celticity in Cornwall as did his antiquarian predecessors or indeed his immediate contemporary, Baring Gould. For example, in the preface to “Songs and Ballads of the West” Baring Gould attributes differences in folk melodies in the West to Celtic influences25 and supports this by tracing Welsh and Breton links in some of the material.
Bearing in mind his Celtic affiliations elsewhere, Jenner had an intriguing and paradoxical relationship with Lady Mary Trefusis and the Cornish branch of the English Folk Dance Society. He served on the organising committee and appears to have been quite supportive of them.26 It may be that Lady Mary Trefusis appealed to his class sensitivities. The Cornish branch of the English Folk Dance Society was nevertheless quite unrepresentative of, and unsympathetic to, folk dance in Cornwall. Their festivals and teaching in schools focussed on the Morris dances of the Midlands and the sword dances of further north together with a smattering of country dances. This was despite the work of people like Courtney but a few decades before and a continuing tradition in Cornwall which included; Guize Dancing in St Ives; Scoot Dances (hard shoe / step dances) in North Cornwall; and the village or chapel Tea Treats that featured dances such as the serpent.27
The Cornish branch elected to adhere strictly to the dances and style promoted by Cecil Sharp, the dominant figure in the English Folk movement. Sharp had devoted little time to collection in Cornwall with short visits in 1913 and 191428 and these took place after most of his work had been published. His interest in Cornish dance was limited to the “Helston Furry” and “Padstow May Day” customs.
Jenner’s distance from folk tradition is illustrated by the material he contributed to Graves for the Celtic Song Book. 29 This was a project which had grown out of the Pan Celtic movement and one would have expected Jenner to take full advantage of the opportunity to promote the Cornish language. Yet he neither translated any songs nor included the ubiquitous “Deliow Sevy” from the Gwavas manuscript of 1698 30 for this compilation. Instead he provided a selection of material from Baring Gould collection including “Widdicombe Fair” rather than an older version from Helston and also repeated the mistake of setting the words of the “Hal An Tow”31 to the quite different tune of the “Helston Furry Dance”. It may be that Jenner had little contact with those actively involved in folk tradition or simply that he was increasingly elderly and frail at the time. His age and frailty did not stop him from contributing some fairly nationalistic material in Cornish to Dunstan’s Cornish Song Book 32 the following year, however, so it remains an enigma.
It fell to Jenner’s successor, Robert Morton Nance (1873 – 1959), to fully embrace the potential of folk tradition for celebrating the sense of a distinctive Celtic identity in Cornwall. Although he is now recognised largely for his work on the Cornish language his formative experiences lay with Cornish dialect and the customs through which it was expressed, in particular what he describes as “guise- dance-drolls”.33 In 1882 Jago identifies Guizing as Cornwall’s equivalent of Morris Dancing34 and contemporaries such as Bottrell and Courtney fill in the detail with descriptions of the step dances, social dances, songs and plays associated with this tradition. It was Nance’s adaptation of Bottrell’s “Duffy and the Devil” which inspired the formation of the first Old Cornwall Society in St Ives in 1920 and encouraged a grass roots culture of collecting folk material in order to rebuild a Cornish identity.35 Nance himself was a practitioner and innovator when it came to folk tradition rather than collector and one is never quite clear from his manuscripts and publications what the provenance of his material is. He never claims that his material is more than inspired by tradition but cross referencing suggests that some is from living tradition and some his own composition.
Nance may not have been the classic folk song and dance collector but the proliferation of Old Cornwall Societies resulted in a large volume of folk material being collected by other people. From the first publication to date there are some 151 folk phenomena recorded in the in the Old Cornwall Society Magazine. It is difficult to compare like with like, but to place this in context, leading 19th century collector / folklorists such as Baring Gould and Courtney recorded just 73 and 50 items respectively.36 Activists like Wallace, Watson, Miners and Thomas connected the Celto- Cornish movement firmly with folk tradition as a way of expressing identity.37 Unlike the visiting folklorist or folksong collector they were practitioners who recorded what they performed and recalled from their own experiences. When the American folksong collector James Madison Carpenter arrived in Cornwall with his wax cylinder recording machine in 1931 they were a well organised force and descended upon him with some enthusiasm. They provided him with songs in Cornish and introduced him to singing sessions in the coastal villages where he was notably the first person to record the Cadgewith Anthem. There are some 41 items from in Cornwall in the Carpenter Collection.38
The singing sessions witnessed and recorded by Carpenter are part of the “lore” of what it is to be Cornish whether the hymns sung by the Bal Maidens or the migrant miner’s improvised harmony of the Sweet Nightingale.39 There is a sense in which these take place in an original setting where people are adding to a repertoire and adapting songs reflexively according to what takes their fancy rather than reflecting on whether it is consistent with their tradition or not. These singing sessions have continued as a living tradition through to the present day. They provided a rich seam of material for Peter Kennedy when he visited Cornwall in the winter of 1956 and recorded
sessions and singers at Cadgewith, Redruth, Malpas and Boscastle. The singing sessions at Cadgewith were much looked forward to by the fishing and gig rowing community when the author first engaged with the tradition in the 1970s40 and the Bolitho archive41 captures examples throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 2006 the An Daras project compiled a collection of “pub songs” from singing sessions across Cornwall which showed both continuity with the repertoire recorded by Carpenter and Kennedy, and new material that was bedding in to the traditional process such as “Cornish Lads”.42
The Old Cornwall Societies were instrumental in regenerating interest in Guizing customs including the St Ives Guizing and the “Hal An Tow” as well as the midsummer tradition of “Golowan” with its bonfires and the “Crying The Neck” ceremonies at harvest time. This interest was focussed on preserving traditional customs and presenting them as part of Cornwall’s distinctive cultural heritage and careful reflection took place on how this might be achieved. “The Hal An Tow”, for example, was but a memory recalled by older Helstonians by the 1930s.43 The Old Cornwall Society researched and revived the tradition by cross referencing these memories with written accounts and comparison with the Padstow Obby Oss.
Dunstan (1857 – 1933) is an interesting figure from the Celto-Cornish folk revival in that he was a professional music academic with a career in London but had started out as a tutor / student bandsman in the midst of the Tea Treat and regatta culture of mid Cornwall. When he retired to Cornwall he reconnected with his musical roots and published two collections of songs and dances from both his own experiences and that of his Cornish contemporaries: The Cornish Song book in 1929 and Cornish Dialect and Folk Song in 1932.44 Both collections contain a wealth of material from folk tradition but the first coincided with the inaugural Cornish Gorseth and includes material that overtly expresses Celto-Cornish identity. These two publications inspired a series of subsequent collections which drew on material collected from oral folk tradition in Cornwall including; Canow Kernow (1966) edited by Gundry45; Hengan (1983) edited by Davey46; and arguably the proliferation of song and tune books that became available following the advent of desk top publishing in the 1990s.
The Celtic Congress was first held in Cornwall in 1932 and whilst it was primarily used a show case for the Cornish language traditional music and dance from Cornwall was included in the concert programme. The onset of War put the activities of the Celto-Cornish movement on hold but by 1949 it had increased its stake in folk tradition with a Cornish and Celtic Dance School forming in Truro and an Inter-Celtic festival in St Ives in 1949. The aspirations of the Celto-Cornish movement were articulated by Denys Val Baker when he described the 1949 Festival in the Cornish Review:
“The aim of the St Ives festival will be to recapture the national culture of the Celtic people; the preservation and teaching of Celtic languages; the popularisation of the music dances, games and industries of the Celt; and the promotion of greater unity between the Celtic nations. Competitions will be held in Celtic Music, literature, languages, Dancing, and game………. The festival culminates in an all-Celtic Ceilidhe, with teams of visiting dancers, and the famous Helston Furry Dancers are performing the traditional Cornish Dance.” 47
The dance school in Truro was organised by Helena Charles, a Celto-Cornish activist and founder member of Mebyon Kernow.48 Her family had been involved in the Helston Furry before the first World War and she was critical of Cecil Sharp’s interpretation of the dance maintaining that he had been influenced by the advice of Lady Rogers (of Exeter) as to what she felt would look nice rather than what actually took place.49 In 1950, she was involved in the Celtic Congress held at Truro
and staged an excerpt of the Cornish Mystery play, Bewnans Meryasek, at St Piran Round. She took the opportunity to incorporate folk dancing and rounded off the performance with a mixture of Cornish and Breton social dance. In doing so, she was setting the scene for a shared sense of identity through folk dance which would become associated with the Celto-Cornish movement.
The following decade saw the emergence of popular music festival culture, the Cambridge Folk Festival started in 1964, the Isle of Wight in 1968 and the iconic Woodstock took place in 1969 followed by Glastonbury in 1970. This wave of interest also encouraged the development of Celtic Festivals with all the variety of definitions, national allegiances and identities that the term offers. The festivals that influenced the folk traditions of Cornwall, however, were those that were expressly Pan Celtic with an expectation of, and opportunity for, representation from Cornwall. The largest of these was the “Festival Interceltique” held in Lorient, Brittany (1970) which had evolved from an earlier bagpipe festival. Also very influential on the Celto-Cornish movement was the Irish “Pan Celtic Festival” (1970) and the Manx “Yn Chruinnaght” (1978)
The impact upon Cornwall was to provide an international platform for Cornish performers and an expectation that performance would represent Cornwall’s Celtic identity. Brenda Wootton became involved as early as 1970 and subsequently described this as the launch of her professional career. Although locally well known, her activity until this date had largely been limited to events at the Minack Theatre, and the folk club circuit. Brenda Wootton is easily identifiable because of an established professional career but there were other Cornish performers groups involved on the Pan Celtic circuit at the time such as “Tremenysy” lead by Cornish language bard, Tony Snell. Although the focus of this essay is the impact upon folk tradition it should be made clear that the Celtic Festival culture was much wider than this in its interests which ranged from popular music to choirs albeit anchored in Celticity by language or context.
One figure from the Pan Celtic movement of the 1970s was particularly supportive of Cornwall’s involvement in this festival culture, Con O’Connail, Chief Executive of the Irish “Feile Pan Cheilteach”. Not only did he canvass for wider Cornish representation at the Irish festival, he visited Cornwall in 1977 to encourage the establishment of a similar a similar event here. In 1978 Brenda Wootton led a strong Cornish representation to the Irish festival which included the resident group at the Falmouth Folk club, Kemysk (Cornish – mixture). The group’s success in with Deliow Sevy in winning the traditional singing competition helped to raise the profile of Pan Celtic activities. Furthermore, chaired by Brenda Wootton’s husband John, a group was set up to organise a similar event in Cornwall. The initial festival was held in Perranporth in October 1978 under the name “Kernow Pan Celtic” but metamorphosed to become “Lowender Peran” the following year and remains an annual event to date. Whilst this was a new event with new people it had a clear lineage that took it back through the Celto-Cornish movement in Cornwall, to the Pan Celtic festivals organised by the Celtic Congress in 1932, 1949 and 1950 and ultimately the activities of the Old Cornwall Societies in the 1920s.
Celtic Festival Culture, the opportunity for travel and large audiences also encouraged the formation of dance teams along the lines of organisations such as Breton “Cercle Celtique” and the Welsh “Dawnswyr Werin”. The pressure was on for them to research Cornish dance traditions in order to establish a repertoire that could be understood as representing a distinctive Cornish identity. In this they were fortunate in that antiquarian interest in the nineteenth century, and the Old Cornwall Society Movement from the 1920s, had already laid down the foundations for the music and dance which might be used for this. Cornish Scoot (step) dancing which lends itself well to choreographic arrangement for display, continued within oral tradition well into this period with practitioners who were able to teach the formative dance groups.50 The popularity of social dance within Celtic Festival culture encouraged recognition of Cornwall’s own history of social dance. The term Ceili (Ceili in Irish Gaelic – Ceilidh in Scottish Gaelic) was first used in relation to dance at a London Gaelic Society event in Bloomsbury Square in October 1897 but was not used extensively for set dance events until the 1930s.51 The root meaning of Ceilidh is simply a gathering, a social event. It is interesting to discover that Cornish dialect should have developed its own term for social dance, Troyl, as early as 1885.52 The term Troyl comes from the Cornish for a reel, whirl or spiral53, a quite different etymology from the term Ceilidh.
The importance here is that the pan-Celtic festival culture created (and creates) a dynamic cultural environment for traditional music and dance particularly encouraged by its participative nature.
This environment inspired two major collection projects: Corollyn: Cornish Dances (1992) 54 and Racca: Cornish Tunes For Cornish Sessions(1997) 55. These are further examples of the sequence of publications set in motion by Dunstan which continues today. 56 What we have in Cornwall throughout the 20th century to the present is an evolving culture of folk tradition taking place in original locations which might be the town or village feast day or a singing session at a party or local pub. We also have the impact of the Celto-Cornish movement which is promoting the sense of Cornish identity around these traditions, directly supporting these traditions in their original location or existence and also providing new locations for performance.
A measure of this impact is to look at the performers at a festival like “Lowender Peran”. A list of Cornish performers for the 30 year period since the start of the festival was included in the souvenir programme for 2008. This listed 123 groups and individuals, all of which will have been asked to provide a performance that celebrated some aspect of a distinctive Cornish identity in a Celtic context. A similar snapshot from a different perspective is provided by “Kesson” a specialist website selling CDs by musicians who present their material as distinctively Cornish. In September 2010 they advertised a total of 85 albums representing the work of 60 different groups.57
The “Folk Revival” and Cornwall
Conventionally there are seen to be two revivals of interest in British / English folk tradition, the first lead by Cecil Sharp at the beginning of the twentieth century and the second spearheaded by A.L. (Bert) Lloyd and Ewan MacColl in the 1950s and 1960s. Atkinson points out, “Whereas the first revival was predominantly the activity of a comparatively small number of enthusiasts, the second was (and is), relatively speaking, a mass cultural movement which has continued, changed, but unabated, for half a century or more.”58 It was as a “mass cultural movement” that the revival arrived in Cornwall. It was packaged with a set of values and language associated with a specific genre of music and dance, which provided a recognised identity for subscribers. In Fairclough’s terminology it was a speech community and a powerful one in terms of both its size and its strong associations with a wider English identity.
The values of the second folk revival were bound up in the fusion of the eclectic and counter cultural sixties folk song revival with the fairly rigid Edwardian orthodoxy of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.59 There were some inconsistencies in how nationality, class, gender and oral folk tradition were perceived and this fusion should have made for a very complex speech community, if indeed one could be identified at all. For example, as Boyse shows, the Edwardian folk revival sought to preserve the hegemonic social structures of British Empire,60 whereas the Sixties revival of A.L. (Bert) Lloyd and Ewan MacColl made great play of the songs that witnessed the working class struggle against that very same hegemony.61 In practice these inconsistencies are ignored or interpreted in such a way as to avoid conflict. Indeed, Atkinson shows that by drawing on songs from the established canon of traditional material known as the “Child Ballads”62 and mixing this with new material the folk revival was able to capture a sense of authenticity for its repertoire and a connection with the earlier revivalists.63
The second Folk Revival was expressed through a variety of media from the increasingly vernacular BBC radio and television to the burgeoning commercial music industry with its package of LPs, albums and promotional tours. The most celebrated representation of the revival has perhaps been the Sidmouth Folk Festival which started in the mid fifties as a summer camp for the English Folk Dance and Song Society but embraced the folk song movement in the late sixties to become a major festival. 64 From Cornwall’s perspective the arrival of the Folk Revival was marked by the advent of two particular institutions, the “Folk Club” and the “Morris Side”.
Competing for authenticity in song
The concept of a “Folk Club” owed much to MacColl’s experience of working with the peoples’ theatres of the 1930s and provided an informal art house performance space for folk music. The typical club formula was / is to have regular house acts and a series of visiting guest performers. For all the communist aspirations of Lloyd and MacColl65 there is no evidence that the folk club was ever a working class space. As a venue for a particular popular music genre it could be seen as classless but there is still a suggestion here of the intelligentsia using folk song to enter into the world of working class life by proxy.
The Count House at Bottallack hosted the first club in Cornwall in the early sixties followed by “The Pipers” at St Buryan and the “Folk Cottage” at Mitchell. These clubs became associated with a number of folk performers who subsequently became well established, including Ralph McTell, Wizz Jones, Pete Berryman, Michael Chapman and Brenda Wootton.66 Pete Berryman describes the folk scene in Cornwall as “a series of circles or families with the immediate local family based around the clubs in St Buryan and Mitchell and a larger, overlapping, family involving performers on the wider British club circuit”.67 He explained that there was no sense of Cornish identity within this community but there was a shared sense of belonging to a group of performers and patrons with an interest in exploring the musical opportunities offered by the folk / blues scene. The “Bodmin Folk Club” formed in 1969, it was affiliated to, and subsidised by, the English Folk Song and Dance Society and had a reputation for a fairly orthodox approach as to what was traditional and suitable for folk club performance.
There is no sense that these clubs set great store by material from oral folk tradition in Cornwall to any great extent apart from an occasional audience participation item in evening’s programme. Wootton was one of the few Celto-Cornish performers to have been fully embraced by folk club culture and that may be because she led the clubs concerned. Furthermore, she seems to have moved on from the folk club circuit by the time she was presenting as the voice of Celtic Cornwall. In 1975 Kennedy published his Folk Songs of the British Isles and Ireland using material collected during a series of recording expeditions in the 1950s and 1960s.68 He defied the convention of his predecessors of grouping songs as Irish, Scottish or English choosing instead categories of lyric subject such as love or occupational songs and also included sections on distinct linguistic groups with songs in Gaelic, Channel Islands French, Welsh and Cornish. The latter very much influenced by Inglis Gundry and his connection with the Celto-Cornish movement. Despite Kennedy’s “Folk Revival” credentials his Cornish songs seem to have found very little currency within the repertoire of most folk clubs
The “Fal Folk Club” at the Dock and Railway in Falmouth was an exception, possibly the influence of two of the organisers, Des Duckham and Ron Williams, who were also active members of Mebyon Kernow.69 The publicity surrounding the Pan Celtic success of Fal Folk club’s “Kemysk” drew attention to the fault lines between the English Folk Revival and the Celto-Cornish movement. A correspondent for the Falmouth Packet maintained that “Delyow Syvy” was the only Cornish Folk Song and there was no other traditional music to be found in Cornwall. 70 The subsequent debate centred on whether songs in collected in Cornwall should be seen as distinctively Cornish or as part of a wider British / English tradition. This altercation voiced the English Folk Revival “common sense” that denied the existence of a distinct Cornish tradition within the canon of British / American folk music whilst at the same time celebrating an English one. According to Atkinson, however, the distinctiveness of an English tradition within this canon might also be denied on the same basis.71
The 1990s saw an escalation in the material, available both in print and audio formats, which presented Cornish music as a distinct tradition. This raised the profile of Cornish folk tradition, but as O’Connor points out, also encouraged criticism from the Folk Revival establishment:
“Opposition to newly identified Cornish material was fostered by a few vociferous speakers, some well respected. Some were conservative: reflecting Bodmin Folk Club’s old extra- Cornish agenda they mistrusted anyone outside the EFDSS [English Folk Dance and song Society] or not subject to academic overview. Some believed that nothing more could possibly remain to be discovered, so anything new must be false. Some saw the overt celebration of Cornish culture as an invention to promote Cornish political consciousness……………. .Today some still retain a cynical view of material identiably Cornish or those promoting it.”72
There is a sense here in which the more powerful speech community of Folk Revival places a greater burden of evidence for material to be recognised as Cornish than it does for English tradition. The trajectory of “I love my love” / “Ryb an Avon” provides a good example of this. In 1905 the Rev Quintrell sent George Gardiner, an academic folk song collector, the music score for a tune he had collected from a Mrs Boaden of Cury near Helston.73 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.74 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.75 It was subsequently reclaimed for Cornwall by Tony Snell who wrote lyrics in Cornish for it and renamed it “Ryb An Avon”. It can be seen that neither name has precedence of authenticity over the other. What is interesting here is the likelihood of “I love my love” being identified as more authentic than “Ryb An Avon” by the English Folk Revivalist.
“Crowns” represent a new generation of bands who take their Cornishness for granted and use it as part of their performance. They are a four piece band who come from Launceston but are currently based in London. They feature an “a capella” singing style mixed with a punk rock instrumentation and fuse their own compositions with traditional material. What makes this group especially interesting is that for all their punk rock presentation their use of Cornish material provides a good example of the folk process. The inspiration for their repertoire is both reflexive in that it comes from the informal “pub” singing sessions they grew up with and reflective in that they emulate the punk Celtic style of the Pogues and arrange their music accordingly. They are influenced by the wider social trend around them that increasingly recognises a distinct Cornish identity and share this with their audiences. Part of their badge of Cornishness is to be sponsored by a Brewery which makes good use of a range of Cornish images from the St Pirans flag to characters from folklore such as Betty Stoggs for its publicity.
Competing for authenticity in dance
The first Morris side formed in Cornwall in 1971 from members of the Bodmin Folk club and took the name Trigg.76 The term “side” is used by the English Folk Revival to describe a team of dancers typically, but not necessarily, 6 to 8 people along with their accompanying musicians. The dance styles vary from the Morris traditions collected by Sharp in the English Home Counties and Midlands to clog dancing and Rapper Sword dancing in the north. 77 Trigg Morris drew their repertoire from the Cotswold dances noted down by Sharp and have remained an all male side. This is significant in that the tradition of all male sides for ritual or display dances is an English phenomenon not shared by the Celtic cultures and fiercely challenged by folk dance researchers such as Georgina Boyse.78 A number of other Morris teams have formed in Cornwall since the
1970s. In 2012 there were nine groups advertising themselves, three all male Cotswold dance sides, one mixed, three Border Morris sides and two ladies North West clog teams.
In their introductions, and the background information provided about their dances, these sides sometimes cite references in the St Columb parish records as evidence of the provenance of Morris dancing in Cornwall. There are certainly references to Morris dancing in Cornwall in 16th century records such as the Green Book of St Columb79 and the household accounts of the Arundels at Lanherne80, but these are concerned with the purchase of materials and provide no description of the dance or detail of the custom involved. The term “Morris / Moryse” is used in the records but there is no evidence to suggest that this has the same meaning as Morris in 21st century England. The best guess is that these would be akin to the Morris dances described by Arbeau in 16th Century France81, a notion supported by the images of the 16th Century Bench ends in Altarnon Church. These resemble the diagrams Arbeau uses to explain a sword dance called the “Mattachins”. Another hint of what was meant by “Morris” in Cornwall lies at the other end of the time spectrum in the form of the “Hal An Tow” which was described as a Morris dance in 1797 82 but bears no relation to the choreography of the Morris dances of say the Cotswolds.
Whilst it is dangerous to form firm conclusions about the provenance of Morris dancing in Cornwall based on the interpretation of Parish and Household accounts there remain clear sign posts to the possibility of quite different dance traditions in Cornwall. There is certainly no record of anything resembling the traditions of the English Home Counties and the Midlands. It is therefore interesting that the emphasis of Morris sides in Cornwall should be on the importation of dance traditions from England rather than exploring the possibilities offered by local Guize and Scoot Dance traditions. There was a well-documented Scoot Dance tradition in Boscastle at the time Trigg Morris was formed83 and a little local research would have provided dancers with steps and moves that could have been interpreted to create a distinctive style of dance. Similarly, the Guize dancing tradition still extant in St Ives, with its history of cross dressing, might also have provided inspiration for the development of a Dance Tradition along the lines of the revival of Molly dancing in East Anglia described by Elaine Brandke.84
The arrival of English Morris dancing in Cornwall thus resulted in competition for cultural space with indigenous folk dancing. The speech community of the Folk Revival did not recognise a distinction between Cornish and English folk tradition so that presenting Cotswold or Border Morris dances as “authentic” folk tradition to represent Cornwall would not be seen as problematic. A practical outcome of this mindset, for example, would be that a twinning association wishing to organise an event representing their own local culture would be encouraged by this speech community to use a Morris side. For example, during the nineteen eighties the Wadebridge Folk Festival, who were at that time largely run by members of Trigg Morris and The Bodmin Folk Club, worked closely with the Town twinning association and used Morris teams as part of their exchange with Brittany.
The Cornish Dance groups that developed out of the Celto-Cornish movement challenged this authenticity by presenting the dances they performed within an historical context in Cornwall. The tension between these two speech communities was articulated in the correspondence pages of the “Cornish Scene” in 1986.85 Following a broad article on Cornish music which mentioned dances a letter was published challenging the authenticity of these dances and dismissing them as “spurious” products of “over-enthusiastic Cornishness”.86 This prompted several letters defending their provenance and praising the groups involved. Whilst there was an inevitable descent into the semantics of authenticity, what is interesting is that Morris dancers in Cornwall were not subject to the same scrutiny as groups representing the Celto-Cornish movement. The speech community of English Folk Revival was the more powerful and therefore represented “common sense” against which the claims of Cornishness were measured.
The mindset of the Folk Revival is also illustrated in a different way by the “Canow Kerrier Project” undertaken by Somerset based organisation Folk South West in the Redruth and Camborne areas in 1997.87 The published aim of the project was to engage the local community and schools with the oral folk traditions of their area. Volunteers were recruited to research the material and develop presentation skills in order to work with children using a pack prepared by the project. The songs used for the pack were those from recognised collections, such as Sharps, identified as coming from the area. The dances, however, were introduced by a section entitled “Notes on Teaching English Country Dance”.88 This section started by explaining the terms “country dancing”, “barn dancing” and ceilidh dancing” but made no mention of the Cornish equivalent “troyl”. Similarly, dance steps were introduced as “Rhythms within the British country dance tradition” but no mention was made of the steps associated with Cornish Furry dances.
Six dances were included in the pack, three generic dances and three sourced from but not credited to the Corollyn project.89 Two of the generic dances were re-named The Stithians Shuffle and The Camborne March. Reference was made to “increasing interest in re-establishing a repertoire of Cornish dances in recent years”90 but neither the Corollyn project nor earlier work by the Old Cornwall Societies was actually cited despite the project leader being provided with this information.91 Cornish collections were not subject to any critique in the text, leading to the conclusion that they were excluded because they did not fit in with the project leader’s mindset rather that dismissed because of any inadequacy. This conclusion is supported by the fact that six other folk dance information and resource packs are mentioned in the text and in the bibliography but these are all either from the project leader’s own publications or from the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
There is a sense here in which the suggestion of an identity in Cornish folk dance as Celtic, rather than English, is part of a much wider threat to the homogeneity of English folk dance. If Cornish traditions are not English then what about the North East with its Rapper Sword Dancing, Border Morris and its Welsh connections or Molly dancing in East Anglia all of which contrast strongly with Cotswold traditions. Conversely how can traditions seen as quintessentially English by Sharp, such as the Morris and the Rapper Sword traditions, also appear in Wales92, Ireland93 and the Isle of Man? 94 Is there in fact a distinctively English folk tradition? In 1936, Needham95 analysed ceremonial folk dance in zones and proposed that they were related to the areas of the Dane-law, Old Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex, and the Celtic areas of Wales and Cornwall. Whilst Needham’s proposal of such a direct geographic link with the early kingdoms of Britain and nineteenth century folk traditions have since been substantially revised96 it nevertheless shows that folk dance traditions in England vary to such an extent that the notion of a homogenous folk culture is questioned. Despite the fact that the “Englishness” of the Six point star Rapper Sword configuration97 and the Padstow Obby Oss are contested both are used extensively by the English Folk Dance and Song Society as icons of English folk tradition.
In 2012 there were 8 groups providing Cornish dance displays drawing upon social dance and Scoot dancing traditions for their repertoire and a number of processional / street bands that merge with Guising tradition. These groups are in direct competition with the Morris sides for performance space at events such as the Royal Cornwall Show and the summer season of outdoor festivals. They include younger groups such as Kekezza and Kemysk (no connection with the long since disbanded Falmouth folk club Group) who, like Crowns, take their Cornishness for granted and draw upon contemporary social trends for their interpretation of tradition.
Conclusions
This essay argues that the Celto-Cornish movement and its links with folk song and dance were well established before the arrival of the English Folk Revival in the 1960s and 1970s. The movement had engaged reflexively and reflectively in folk music and dance in its original location and provided new locations for its performance. The agenda for the Celto-Cornish movement was that in order to assert its Celticity Cornwall needed to establish a distinctive folk tradition from England, one recognised in the same way as that of Brittany, Wales, Scotland Ireland and the Isle of Man. Furthermore, in the spirit of building Nance’s “New Cornwall”,98 it also promoted / promotes new folk dances and songs within a culture expressing sentiments of Cornish distinctiveness.
When the English Folk Revival arrived in Cornwall it came packaged with its own imaginary concerning what was authentic and appropriate in folk tradition, and this did not fit with the approach taken by the Celto-Cornish movement. This essay argues that the English Folk Revival had a stake in Cornwall being part of the English imaginary. For Cornwall to be Celtic rather than English challenged the notion of Cornwall’s Englishness. This was especially problematic for folk dance, and Morris sides in particular, as they would have no authenticity as a traditional activity of Cornwall. They would become a dance activity in Cornwall like Scottish Country dancing or Line Dancing rather than having the authenticity of being a native tradition of Cornwall as part of England.
The Celto-Cornish movement and the English Folk Revival can therefore be understood as two speech communities that use folk material as currency but interpret it in different ways and use it to express identities that potentially conflict. The English Folk Revival is a powerful movement. It has a large number of people investing in its identity; it has commercial backing, a large media presence and recognition within the school curriculum dating from the time of Sharp and the early publications for schools. The implications for the Cornish are that the mindset of this more powerful speech community risks becoming “common sense” despite the lack of any evidence to favour this position against any other. The outcome for Cornish cultural identity of such “common sense” is that indigenous folk culture risks losing out in the competition for social and performance space. It may be, however, that the “common sense” of the English Folk revival speech community is replaced by an increasingly powerful Cornish one as demonstrated by the example of Crowns Kekezza and Kemysk above and their association with modern Cornish identity.
Notes
1 Dave Harker, Fakesong, the manufacture of British “Folksong” 1700 to the present day, (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1985): Georgina Boyes, The imagined village: culture, ideology, and the English folk revival. (Manchester, Manchester University Press 1993).
2 Merv Davey, “As is the manner and the custom: folk tradition and identity in Cornwall”, Folk tradition and identity in Cornwall, (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, University of Exeter, 2011),
3 Felix Hoerburger, “Once Again: On the Concept of Folk Dance” Journal of the International Folk Music Council ” (1968: 30-I), p. 31: See Also discussion in Merv Davey “As the manner and the custom” p27
4 The Helston Furry is a processional dance lead that takes place annually on the 8th May. It is danced through the streets of Helston at key points during the day, it is led by the local brass bands and a large number of people are involved. A number of towns and villages in Cornwall have their own Furry Dance. The term Furry is thought to derive from the Cornish for fair – fer, thus it is a fair day dance.
5 Merv Davey, “Guizing: Ancient Traditions And Modern Sensitivities.” In Cornish Studies Fourteen, ed Philip Payton (Exeter, University of Exeter press, 2006), pp. 229 – 244.
6 Guizing is a term used in Cornwall where a party of people disguise themselves by cross dressing, wearing veils, dressing “mock posh” or simply by blacking up faces. The party then tour an area performing a mixture of songs and dances sometimes incorporated into a folk play.
7 Norman Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis”, The Critical Study of Language, ( London and New York, Longman, 1995); see also Fairclough, Norman . Critical discourse analysis in transdisciplinary research, University of Lancaster: www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/norman/paper4.doc accessed 23rd April 2008.
8 Bernard Deacon, From Cornish Studies to Critical Cornish Studies”, Cornish Studies Twelve,(Exeter,Exeter University Press, 2004), p. 27.
9 Norman Fairclough, The Critical Study of Language, p. 27.
10 Johann Gottfried Von Herder, ed. Volkslieder. ( Leipzig, Weygandschen Buchhandlung,1778 ), online version Volkslieder ( Leipzig, Gebbardt und Reislaund, 1840) http://www.archive.org/stream/volkslieder01falkgoog#page/n6/mode/2up accessed 2nd July 2006.
11 John Francmanis, “Folk song and the ‘folk’: a relationship illuminated by Frank Kidson’s Traditional Tunes” in Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Re-Creation, ed. Ian Russel and David Atkinson (Aberdeen, The Elphinstone Institute, 2004), p186-187.
12 Dairmuid Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish folklore : tradition, modernity, identity, (Sterling, VA, Cork University Press, 2000), p. 25, with reference to Macphersons’ Poems of Ossian and Renan’s “La poésie des races celtiques”.
13 May McCann, “ Music and Politics in Ireland: The Specificity of the Folk Revival in Belfast”, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 4, Special Issue: (1995), p.55. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060683 Accessed: 31/10/2009.
14 Juliette Wood, “Perceptions of the Past in Welsh Folklore Studies.” Folklore 108(1997):pp 93-102. p.97, citing: Prys Morgan .”Keeping the Legends Alive.”, in Wales: The Imagined Nation: Studies in Cultural and National Identity, editor Tony Curtis. 17-42. (Bridgend: Poetry Wales Press, 1986.) , 75-92; and Gereint Bowen . “Gorsedd y Beirdd-From Primrose Hill 1782 to Aberystwyth 1992.” Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 1992), pp.115-30.
15 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, ed. The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983).
16 Gilbert, Davies. Some Ancient Christmas Carols Second ed. (London: John Nichols And Son, , 1823), The Helston Forey – a Specimen of Celtick Music.
17 William Sandys writing as Uncle Jan Trennoodle
18 Margaret Ann Courtney,Cornish Folk-Lore. Part 2“ (Continued).” The Folk-Lore Journal Vol. 5, no. 2 (1887), p. 85.
19 Margaret Ann Courtney, Thomas Quiller- Couch,. Glossary of Words in Use in Cornwall. : West Cornwall by Miss M.A. Courtney. East Cornwall by Thomas Q. Couch. (London, Trübner & Co, 1880), introduction, p.12.
20Alan Dundes, “Nationalistic Inferiority Complexes and the Fabrication of Fakelore: A Reconsideration of Ossian, the Kinder- und Hausmarchen, the Kalevala, and Paul Bunyan.” Journal of Folklore Research 22(1) 1985, pp. 5-18.
21 Bernard Deacon, “The Hollow Jarring of the Distant Steam Engines: Images of Cornwall between West Barbary and Delectable Duchy.”, in Cornwall, the Cultural Construction of Place, ed. Ella Westland, (Penzance, Patten Press, 1997).
22 Philip Payton. “Paralysis and Revival: The reconstruction of Celtic -Catholic Cornwall 1880 -1945.” in Cornwall: The Cultural Construction Of Place, ed. Ella Westland, (Penzance, Patten Press, 1997), pp. 25-39.
23 Bernard Deacon, “A Concise History of Cornwall”, p.124.
24 Henry Jenner, “The Renaissance of Merry England: Presidential address, September 1920”, Journal of Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society (Falmouth),1922, pp. 51 – 61.
25 Sabine Baring-Gould, and H. Fleetwood Shepherd. Songs and Ballads of the West: A Collection Made from the Mouths of the People, (London: Methuen & Co, 1891), pp. vii – xi.
26 Henry Jenner, Ms box Courtney Library, Royal Institute of Cornwall, copies of posters and notifications of meetings relating to the Cornish Folk Dance society
27 Merv Davey, Alison Davey, and Jowdy Davey. Scoot Dances, Troyls, Furrys and Tea Treats: The Cornish Dance Tradition. (London: Francis Boutle & Co, 2009), pp 17 – 56.
28 Cecil J. Sharp, Transcription of notebook, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil Sharp House, London, vol.3, p.104.
29 Alfred Percival Graves,The Celtic song book : being representative folk songs of the six Celtic nations. (London, E. Benn. 1928).
30 Gwavas manuscript ,1698, (British Museum MSS 28554) p135- item 9,
31 The Hal An Tow is a “play” performed on the 8th May in Helston at various locations in the town and quite separately from the Furry Dance.
32 Ralph Dunstan, Ed. The Cornish Song Book, Lyver Canow Kernewek, (London, Reid Bros Ltd 1929).
33 Robert Morton Nance, The Cledry plays; drolls of old Cornwall for village acting and home reading.(Marazion, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies,1956).
34 Fred W. .P Jago, The Ancient Language and the Dialect of Cornwall (Truro, Netherton and Worth, 1882.) Entry under Guise Dance: “A kind of comical or Bal masque at Christmas. Polwhele calls is the guise or disguise dance, for so the Cornish pronounce guise (geeze). This dance answers to the mummers of Devon, and the Morrice dancers of Oxfordshire &c. In Celtic Cornish ges, means mockery, a jest.”
35 Robert Morton Nance, “What We Stand For”, Old Cornwall , (St Ives, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, April 1925) Vol. 1, No 1, pp. 3-45.
36 Merv Davey, “As is the Manner and The Custom: folk tradition and identity in Cornwall”, (Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Exeter, 2011 – handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10036/3377 pp.335- 339
37 Bessie Wallace, William Watson, Tom Miners and Jim Thomas were major contributors to the early old Cornwall Society Magazines, providing articles on folk songs, guizing customs, storytelling and the Cornish language.
38 James Madison Carpenter Collection, Library of Congress, Washington DC, AFC 1972/001
39 Robert Bell. Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England. (London, Parker, 1857). Although the melody was not in fact collected until much later by Baring Gould from a “mining gentleman of Truro”, Bell maintainsit was collected from the singing of Cornish miners in the lead mines of Germany in 1856.
40 Merv Davey, Hengan: traditional folk songs, dances and broadside ballads collected in Cornwall. (Redruth, Dyllansow Truran, 1983).
41 Bolitho Archive, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies Sound Archive, Kresen Kernow, Redruth.
42 Roger Bryant, “Cornish Lads”, Cornwall Songwriters, Cry of Tin, CD (St Ervan, Lyngham House Music, 2000), LYNG212CD.
43 Spencer Toy, The History of Helston. (London,Oxford University Press,1936), p.375.
44 Ralph Dunstan, ed. The Cornish Song Book, Lyver Canow Kernewek, (London: Reid Bros Ltd 1929): Ralph Dunstan, Cornish Dialect and Folk Songs, (Truro, Jordan’s Bookshop, 1932).
45 Inglis Gundry, Canow Kernow : songs and dances from Cornwall. (St. Ives, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies 1966).
46 Merv Davey, Hengan : traditional folk songs, dances and broadside ballads collected in Cornwall.(Redruth, Dyllansow Truran,1983).
47 Denys Val Baker, “Editorial” The Cornish Review, First Series, Spring 1949, no. 2, pp. 6 – 7.
48 Denys Val Baker, “People” The Cornish Review, First Series, Winter 1951, no. 8, p. 67 .
49 Helena Charles, “Drama in Cornwall” The Cornish Review, First Series, Winter 1951, no 8, pp. 51 – 56.
50 Merv Davey, et al. Scoot Dances, Troyls, Furrys and Tea Treats: The Cornish Dance Tradition. (London, Francis Boutle & Co, 2009), Section One.
51 John P. Cullaine, Encyclopaedia of Ireland. (Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 2003), p. 176.
52 Merv Davey et al . Scoot Dances, Troyls, Furrys and Tea Treats: The Cornish Dance Tradition. London: Francis Boutle & Co, 2009. pp.1 and 19.
53 Borlase, William. Antiquities, Historical and Monumental of Cornwall: (Oxford W. Jackson, 1758 – second enlarged edition1769), p. 459.
54Alison Davey, Editor, Corollyn: Cornish Dances, (Perranporth, Cam Kernewek / Plymouth University,1992), book / CD / Video format.
55 Frances Bennett, et al Editors . Racca: Cornish Tunes for Cornish Sessions, (Calstock, published by RACCA, edition 1. 1995 and edition 2. 1997)
56 See Neil Davey, Fooch ( Wadebridge, Lingham House Music, 2002); An Daras Project (www.an- daras.com 2003 – to date); Mike O’Connor Ylow Kernow series (Wadebridge, Lingham House Music, 2000 to date).
57 www.kesson.com, The Cornish Music Collaborative, accessed 30th Oct 2010
58 David Atkinson, “Revival: Genuine or Spurious?” in Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Re-Creation. eds. Ian Russel and David Atkinson,(Aberdeen, The Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen,2004), p 152.
59 The Folk Song Society formed in London in 1898, under Cecil Sharps leadership this became the English Folk Song Society and eventually combined with the English Folk Dance society to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society – EFDSS.
60 Georgina Boyes, The imagined village : culture, ideology, and the English folk revival. (Manchester; Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 24.
61 A.L (Bert) Lloyd, Folk Song In England, (London, Laurence & Wishart Ltd in association with The Workers Music Association, 1967), pp, 39 -148.
62 The child Ballads are named after Francis Child, an American literary academic who published five volumes of English language folk ballads between 1857 and 1893 and acted as a cross reference for most subsequent folk song collectors
63 David Atkinson, “The English Revival Canon: Child Ballads and the Invention of Tradition”, The Journal of American Folklore 114(453) 2001, pp. 370-380..
64 Derek Schofield, The First Week In August – Fifty Years of the Sidmouth Festival, (Sidmouth, Sidmouth International Festival Ltd, 2005).
65 Both Lloyd and MacColl were active members of the Communist Party and the Workers Music Association funded some of Lloyds work.
66 Rupert White, “Interview with Martin Val-Baker”, Art Cornwall Nov 2006. http://www.artcornwall.org/interview%20Martin%20Val%20Baker.htm , Accessed 9th Feb 2010.
67 Pete Berryman, interview with author, St Blazey, 9th September 2010.
68 Peter Kennedy, ed. Folksongs of Britain and Ireland, (London, Cassell, 1975).
69 The Author was a regular performer at the club between 1975 and 1979 and a member of Kemysk. It was at a Mebyon Kernow meeting which he attended shortly after moving to Falmouth in 1975 that he met Des Duckham and Ron Williams and was encouraged to attend the Folk Club.
70 Falmouth Packet, correspondence, (Lakes Publishers), May – June 1978.
71 David Atkinson, Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Re-Creation.
72 Mike O’Connor, Ilow Kernow 4 : Cornish instrumental tradition : the resource. (Wadebridge, Lyngham House, 2009), p. 127.
73 George B Gardiner Manuscripts, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil Sharp House, Regents Park Road, London
74 Lucy Broadwood, Maid of Bedlam, Journal of the Folk Song Society Vol 2 1905 – 1906 no 7, p. 93
75 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).
76 Trigg Morris, information sheet and venue list 2010. Although Pete Marlow explained that there had been a group in Falmouth called Kernow Morris which started before this, but had not become fully established (interviewed 19th April 2011).
77 A style of dance from the North East involving six dancers using a metal blade with a swivel handle on each end which is held by the dancers and results in the need for some fairly precise choreography.
78 Georgina Boyes, The Imagined Village, also Georgina Boyes, “The lady that is with you” , in Step change: new views on traditional dance. (London, Francis Boutle, 2001).
79 Thurstan C Peter, “The Green Book of St Columb: Suppliment to Journal Of Royal Institution of Cornwall” 1912. Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro, 1912
80 H.L.Douche, “Household accounts at Lanherne”. Journal of Royal Institution of Cornwall, New Series, 1, 11 part 11953, pp 28-29
81 Thoinot Arbeau, Orchesography, (Langres,1589), English translation by Mary Stewart Evans, additional notes by Mary Sutton, (Toronto, Dover press, 1967), p.177. Describes a Morris dance from 16th Century France and discusses its probable origins in Rome or the Basque country.
82 Durgan, letter addressed to Editor, Sylvanus Urban. Gentlemans Magazine andHistorical Chronicle for the year MDCCXC, p. 520
83 Merv Davey, Scoot Dances.
84 Elaine Bradtke, “Molly Dancing: a Study of Discontinuity and Change” Georgina Boyes, in Step change new views on traditional dance, ed. Georgina Boyes, (London, Francis. Boutle. 2001). p. 61 – 86.
85Ian Marshall, “Recording Cornish Folk Songs” Cornish Scene; vol. 1, no. 5, February / March 1986, p. 49: “Letters to the Editor”, Cornish Scene, vol. 1, no. 5, April / May 1986; vol. 2, no. 1, June / July 1986; vol. 2, no. 2, August / Sept 1986.
86 J Penlee, “Letters to the Editor”, Cornish Scene; vol. 1, no. 5, April / May 1986, p.12.
87 Eddie Upton, Canow Kerrier, ( Montacute,Folk South West. 1997).
88 Eddie Upton, Canow Kerrier (1997), p. 32.
89 Alison Davey. Corollyn.
90 Eddie Upton, Canow Kerrier .
91 Correspondence with author, 23rd Feb 1997: Provided a comprehensive list of Cornish folk song and dance publications plus details of songs collected in the area.
92 Lois Blake.”The Morris in Wales”. Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Dec.,1960), pp. 56- 57.
93 Alan Gailey. “The Nature Of Tradition” Folklore, Vol. 100, No. 2. (1989), pp. 143-161. p. 155. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0015-587X%281989%29100%3A2%3C143%3ATNOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M. accessed 25th Jan 2008.
94 Mona Douglas, “Manx Folk Dances: Their Notation and Revival” Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, 1937; III(2), pp.110-16: The White Boys. Lowender Peran 2007. Tower Films 2008. DVD format. The Manx “White Boys” use “Swords “ similar to those of Rapper sides to form a six point star. The same star that is used by the English Folk Song and Dance society as a logo.
95 Joseph Needham, “The Geographical Distribution of English Ceremonial Dance Traditions.” Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society 1936 , 3(1), pp. 1-45.
96 E. C. Cawte, Alex Helm, R. J. Marriott and N. Peacock. A Geographical Index of the Ceremonial Dance in Great Britain: Part One Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Dec., 1960), pp. ii +1-41.
97 The final choregraphy of the Rapper Sword dances involves the dancers slotting the swords together so that they form a star that can be held aloft by a single dance.
98 Robert Morton Nance, “Introduction: What we stand for”, Old Cornwall Vol.1, No, 1, (St Ives, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, 1925), p. 3.