Troon Singers Christmas Card

Cornish Carols At Troon

David Oates, Troon, Cornwall.

One sound and that was all it took

To bring the picture flooding back

Through endless years,

And, focussing, the picture clears.

One sound, the rasp of boots on stone

As through the darkened streets they hurry on,

Strange race of men apart,

Held by a common bond

That held their fathers, too,

And still grips strong -

The east wind cuts and moans;

The group of men pull tight

And burst forth into song.

Young joins with old as one

And rising, swelling, breaks like light

Into the darkest chambers of the night.

They sing as one and on the wind-cut hill

For this brief moment in eternity,

Time stands still.

And from the shadows

From the mists of years,

Step those of long ago.

And we, together, keep the faith.

That shaped this land

And made it strong.

The magic slowly fades

And leaves with us,

In windswept darkness lying,

The echoes of an age.

The singers are from the village of Troon near Camborne in Cornwall. Records show that in the 1890’s a tradition existed in the village of a group of men – probably drawn, in the main, from the strong Methodist tradition that was found in every mining community – forming an ad hoc choir and singing “Cornish”carols, unaccompanied, around the streets of the village in the period leading up to Christmas, with the highlight being Christmas day. These carols were also sung by them, too, as they went below ground to burrow in the darkness of the many local mines – the great Wheal Grenville and the mighty Dolcoath, where the levels would ring with joy at Christmas time. That tradition has continued above ground – with possible breaks in war time – until the present day, with the great-great grandsons of those singers from the nineteenth century forming the backbone of the choir. The Christmas season of 2001 will mean that this music making in Troon has spanned three centuries, and, possibly, longer than that. For many years now, that choir has not only sung in the streets of the village but is eagerly awaited in various residential homes and institutions over a wider area.

The mining district around Redruth and Camborne has been singing carols to locally written tunes for almost a hundred and fifty years. Many of the tunes were written by local men and W. Eade of Redruth wrote Holy Voices which is the background music you are hearing. The choir’s repertoire is essentially the same as it was in 1890 and the music consists of a tenor lead, singing the melody, a counter, or second, tenor, a bass harmony and an alto or treble part above them. Musically, many of the carols are similar in construction and are seemingly drawn from a well-known core of local composers with the most celebrated being Thomas Merrit from Illogan whose carols are often accompanied in church but are at their best heard unaccompanied at Troon. Born in 1865, becoming a miner at the Carn Brea Mine and then a tin streamer at the Tolvaddon Tin Streams, he studied music in his spare time and eventually gave up the labouring life to teach and composed over a hundred pieces, including his famous carols, of which one, his version of “Hark the glad sound" is synonymous with a Cornish Christmas.

The Troon choir has taken carols both to the village and to homes for the elderly at Christmas and you can see and hear them singing on these video clips filmed by Sandra Vingoe on Christmas day 2006