Cadgwith Cove Inn, August 1998

I've just finished processing and uploading to the IAA an old archive recording from the summer of 1998. I was travelling with the Dongas down on The Lizard in Cornwall, and we'd been offered a little gig at The Cove Inn in the rather lovely village of Cadgwith.

At the time, we heard that this was a pub where sailors and fishermen still gathered in the evening to sing shanties, etc. (although I never witnessed this personally). I also just discovered via a websearch that Steeleye Span's All Around My Hat album contains a "Cadgwith Anthem" (traditional, I presume), of which I was previously unaware. The canon of Cornish folk music is disappointingly small, we discovered when travelling there, as most of it was lost during the English suppression of Cornish culture. We learned as many tunes as we could find (some of disputed Cornishness - one, called "Newlyn" sounded positively Bulgarian!), but never came across a "Cadgwith Anthem".


Cadgwith cove - photo from http://www.theholidaycottages.co.uk
It was a beautiful day - we walked there with the donkeys, mules and goats from our camp in Coverack and camped near St. Ruan's Well on the edge of the village. A German tourist recorded the music on his camcorder and sent us an audio tape when he got home to Germany.

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illustration from The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England by R.C. Hope
More Dongas field recordings from 1997-1999 are currently in the pipeline.