Old & New Cornish Christmas Carols
Cornish Carols - A Tradition For The World
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These digital Christmas cards are based on a series of engravings and old and new Carols.
As part of the World Heritage Site Cultural Programme a competition was held to promote Cornish Carol singing and to find some new ones. The article "Cornish Carols - a tradition for the world" is about this. I am grateful to the organisers "From Carn to Coast" for providing me with a CD of the winning carol plus two others for inclusion on the site.
I have illustrated the site with 19th century black and white prints by a number of artists, and have used the Microsoft Photopaint programme to digitally enhance them adding colour and carol singers. I hope you enjoy the result. An explanation on how these engravings were created is given in the article by A Eva a.r.c.a. which was published in Old Cornwall volume three. The picture above is of Market Jew Street, Penzance and was drawn by Thomas Allom a watercolourist and illustrator, an architect and topographical draughtsman. He practiced as an architect mainly in London, notably on the Kensington Park Estate in the 1850s and was a founder member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Allom was most prolific and successful as a topographical artist during the 1830s and 1840s. This and other of his prints were engraved on steel and produced as black and white illustrations in "Cornwall Illustrated" which was published in 1831 by Fisher, Son & Co of London.
A second article published by John Penwith gives a background to the carols. J Penwith was the pen-name of J H Martin, b1914, d1998. He wrote for "The Cornishman" and other papers before leaving Trezelah, Gulval, in 1952. He ended up in Stevenage, Herts, where he co-founded and edited the magazine "Ships Monthly". He is buried, with his American wife (Ruth), in Ludgvan. John was a Bard of the Cornish Gorseth "Man of the Moors". *Note
Thankfully the demise of the Cornish carol did not come about and there are still groups going out into the streets of Cornwall and indeed Cornish communities around the world, to sing them at Christmastime. The aim of this site is to make more people aware of the tradition of singing carols to tunes written by local people. Over the next twelve months it i planned to add to the site recordings of local groups singing their particular favourite carol and if you can help in this quest then please contact me.
George Pritchard at 2, Penhalvean Cottages, Penhalvean, Redruth, Cornwall TR16 6TQ. 01209 860194
You could help promote this project by sending either an individual cards or all of them by cutting and pasting the titles below onto an e-mail with your message on it.
Cornish Carols - A Tradition For The World
Panoramas and Prints By Charles A. Eve a.r.c.a.
Leaves From A Cornish Notebook. By John Penwith.
The Carol Cards
cut & paste any of the above titles on an e-mail to send the card with your message.
* Note: Information supplied by his son Mr. David K Martin of Ashford in Kent.
Thanks to Hymns and Carols for making the midis scores available to use.
Download it free here
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Federation of Old Cornwall Societies www.oldcornwall.org |
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