Carolling around Redruth 2018

There are plenty of other places that Cornish Carolling will be happening from East to West this winter but here are the dates of not only the carolling around the Redruth area but also a couple of talks which Sally and Hilary will be giving about their book Hark! The Glad Sound of Cornish Carols.

November

Saturday 24th – 6:00pm at the Town Clock. Redruth Wassail.

December

Sunday 2nd – 4:30pm, Redruth Carol Choir visits Flowerpot Chapel, Higher Fore Street area.

Sunday 2nd – 8pm. First & Last Carols. Countryman Inn, Piece, Redruth, TR16 6SG.

Tuesday 4th – 7pm. Carols with the Red Rivers at Waterstones Bookshop, Truro

Wednesday 5th – 7.30pm, Hark! Talk for Padstow Old Cornwall Society. Social Club, Padstow

Saturday 8th – 6.30pm. Carol Concert with the Red River Singers, Coer Heb Hanow & Tereba Nessa, Liberal Club, Camborne

Sunday 9th – 4:30pm, Redruth Carol Choir visits Plain an Gwarry area.

Wednesday 12th – 3.30pm. Gwinear Church Tree Festival with the Red River Singers,  followed by tea in the church. Gwinear Church, TR27 5JZ

Thursday 13th – 7.30pm. Carol Concert with the Red River Singers, St Agnes Methodist Church, 30 British Road, St Agnes TR5 0UA.

Friday 14th – 4pm, Carols with the Redruth Carol Choir at the Old Fashioned Christmas in the Butter Market, Redruth

8pm – Carols with the Red River Singers, Plume of Feathers, Fore Street, Pool, Redruth TR15 3PF. Contact number for venue: 01209 713513.

Sunday 16th – 4:30pm, Redruth Carol Choir visits Albany Rd, Treruffe Hill area (followed by Baptist Church Carol Concert – all welcome)

Wednesday 19th – 1-2pm. Hark! talk. Truro Museum, 25 River Street, Truro, TR1 2SJ.

Thursday 20th – Evening. Diaspora Carols, Truro Cathedral, 14 St Mary’s Street, Truro, TR1 2AF. Including the Redruth Carol Choir, http://www.trurocathedral.org.uk/whats-on/carols-from-the-cornish-diaspora

Friday 21st – 6.30pm. Carol Concert with the Red River Singers, Trevenson Church, Church Road, Pool, Redruth TR15 3PT.

Sunday 23rd – 4:30pm, Redruth Carol Choir visits Trewirgie, West End area

January

Saturday 5th – 3pm onwards, Degol Stul (12th Night Feast), Red Rivers singing around 6pm, Grampound Village Hall

Sunday 6th – 8pm, First & Last Carols. Countryman Inn, Piece, Redruth, TR16 6SG.

The start of our 2017 tour!

Our 2017 Hark! tour got off to a fine start at The Federation of Old Cornwall Societies’ Winter Event in Redruth on Saturday 4th November, where we gave a talk about our exploits and research. The talk was musically illustrated by The Red River Singers singing some of the carols featured in the book.

Wefollowed this with an interview on Wednesday 8th, on Curtain Up with Sheila Vanloo, on Radio St Austell Bay, and we can also be heard on Monday 13th talking to Debbie McCrory on Radio Cornwall between 3 and 5pm, and on the 16th we’ll be having a chat on Coast Afternoon with John Pestle  between 2 and 5pm. Debbie has invited us back to Radio Cornwall in December to sing a couple of carols, so watch this space for more info!

Come and see us at one of our coming events, have a chat, and get your copy of Hark! The Glad Sound of Cornish Carols signed!

Update on Hark!

 

Autumn 2016

Here we are now during a few golden days of Autumn and I have a chance to catch up on news about the Carol Book research.

Research: We spent the Spring and Summer visiting the Cornish Studies library in Redruth (like a sweet shop to us!) gathering information on all the publications made about Cornish Carols. Unlike our previous book on the pub songs, there is a wealth of writing about this topic going as far back as Davies Gilbert (1823) and Sandys (1852) right up to the present day re-publications by the Old Cornwall Society of some of the old Carol Books; so much to read and absorb!

Researching in Kresenn Kernow

 

We were very excited to discover in the library a notebook, probably dating from the late 1700s and possibly from the Hayle area, with four beautifully handwritten carols, two of which are in our singers’ repertoire; A Virgin Most Pure and To Mirth Inclined (although there were 28 verses in the notebook!) One other, Gods Dear Son, has now entered the Cornish instrumental tradition as An Dufynyans, which my band, Dalla, recently recorded! That only leaves one, called Remember Oh Thou Man, which is in both the Hutchins manuscript collection from the Penzance area (approx 1825) and in Sandys’ however the tune in the latter collection is the same as one in an even older British collection called the Melismata from 1611!

Interviews: As well as visiting the library and doing lots of reading we have been fortunate enough to visit several people with knowledge of Carols in their area and have now recorded a wealth of memories and stories from Polperro to St Ives!

Two manuscripts of the same carol – Behold. One from an ancient chap book in the possession of a carol researcher Peter Meanwell and the other a recent photocopy of a transcription from Polperro

 

We have a few more interviews to go before we do our final recordings this Christmas. I’m glad to say we won’t be quite as busy as last year and our dates for these Carol trips so far are:

Monday 28th November – Carol concert, Parkhouse Centre, Bude

Sunday 11th December – Merritt Concert, Redruth Wesley Chapel

Saturday 17^th December – Cotehele Wassail, Calstock

Saturday 24th December – Falmouth Docks

We have heard that some Cornish carols are sung at Camelford on Boxing Day, so if anyone knows about this we’d love to hear from you!

Hark! The Glad Sound of Cornish Carols

Sally and Hilary are at it again! After the success of their first book Shout Kernow, celebrating the pub songs of Cornwall they are once more planning to travel around Cornwall to all kinds of places and venues but this time their mission is to record the carols of Cornwall being sung in situ ‘where they do belong to be’. They hope to represent a variety of locations: church, chapel, pub, out on the street, people’s houses, etc. showing how our carols are embedded in the communities from which they come, selecting ones that are most popular or meaningful to the area they come from or to the people who sing them.

Here’s some of the places they’ll be visiting (nearly all in the month of December!):

Bodmin, Bolingey, Boscastle, Bridge, Bude, Calstock, Falmouth, Four Lanes, Halzephron, Luxulyan, Padstow, Paul, Pencarrow, Penzance, Polperro, Pool, Port Isaac, Redruth, St Neot, St Day, St Ives, St Just, Stithians, Treen, Tregajorran, Troon,

..and some of the carols too:

Boscastle  Jack, Stratton Carol,  Can Dilly,  Bodmin Wassail, Treen While Shepherds, Lyngham, Hark The Glad Sound, Lo He Comes, Hail Sacred Day,  Awake Ye Nations, Choir Of Angels, Arise & Hail,  Pendeen While Shepherds, Hail Smiling Morn,  Newlyn While Shepherds, Sound, Sound,  Hellesveor, See The Morning, St Day,  Glory, Glory, Stithians While Shepherds,  Harky,Harky, Jesse, Rouse,Rouse, Polperro While Shepherds (Xmas Time), Holly & Ivy, What Heavenly Music, Carol Carol Christians, A Virgin Unspotted, Redruth Wassail, Wassail The Silver Apple, Lo The Eastern Sages, Calm On The Listening Ear.

As you can imagine the cost of this travelling will be quite large so to raise money for this we have produced a pack of 6 unique Cornish Christmas cards for sale at £5 (+ £1.50 P&P). Please contact Hilary at hilary-fenten@hotmail.co.uk if you would like to support us and order a pack!

Hark! Christmas Card