Song Spotlight: Harry Glasson,"Cornwall My Home"

For this is my Eden, and I'm Not Alone

Last week, listening to Kitka sing in a beautiful cathedral, I was suddenly reminded of the LAST time folk music made me nearly break down into a full-on ugly cry in public.

You know, when men cry, the women in our lives can get very alarmed, because we cry at very strange times… having suppressed all the emotion from regular sad life events, it comes roaring out of us when the baseball team loses, when Sean Connery almost dies of a gunshot wound aboard the Red October, or when a group of Cornish drunks starts humming an old folk tune in the pub.

To begin: my wife and our good friend Wormley Wangersnitch (Dreadnoughts fiddler at the time) had started out on a trip hiking the Cornish Coast.

(By the way; if you ever find yourself with the means to do so, go long-distance hiking in England, Scotland or Wales. It’s about the same cost as some dumb all-inclusive resort vacation but you get to ramble over beautiful hills, lush valleys and enjoy extreme ocean landscapes—with a pub on the trail every three hours, oh and there might be good cider.)

Wormley and I stuck our heads into a little pub in beautiful Boscastle, Cornwall at the outset of our trip, and we saw some people taking out guitars and setting up little amps. I thought: huh, interesting. Then, amazingly, a woman walked out of the pub and asked: “are you two musicians?” I guess musicians look a certain way? She let us know that there was an open jam and that we were welcome inside.

This was the Napoleon Inn, known to the locals of Boscastle, Cornwall as ‘The Nap’, now immoralized in our song Cider Holiday:

To a shanty sing in Boscastle
The table's set, the Nap is full
Grab a pint and pull up a chair
You won't believe what's waitin' there

I mean I seriously still cannot believe what was waiting there. They had good farmhouse scrumpy on tap in this old-school 18th century pub, people were inviting and friendly, and we ended up singing and playing with them until about midnight. It was such an astonishing bit of luck to end up with these people that I—infused with the spirit of cider and the voices of the Old Gods—completely abandoned all of my musical snobbery and sang overplayed classic rock.

And reader, dear reader, a confession. I will tell you this because I trust you and because I hope you understand that this night was about freedom, about togetherness, about doing something because it just feels right in the moment. I sang…. I sang…

This is hard to type. Come on, fingers, you can do this.

I sang—no, I belted out, word for word—the song—

…Wagon Wheel.

I feel dirty having typed that, but at the time it just made sense. Even for me, a guy whose 5-year running open mic in Providence, Rhode Island had a constantly-updated sign above the stage that read “___ days since someone has played fucking Wagon Wheel.”

Such was the state I was in, and such was the magic of the evening! We had been transported to this place of complete freedom and mirth. Afterwards, my companions and I stumbled back to our B&B feeling happy, alive, the ocean wind on our face, the black cats of delightfully witchy Boscastle scurrying around us on the evening street.

But before we left the Nap, the musicians were packing up their instruments, and suddenly they all burst into this a capella song. I was very drunk, so I could only recall a few details about it the next day: it was about Cornwall, it was a gentle folk song, it had the line “the men singing as they go underground” a reference to old Cornwall’s (in)famous mining culture. And my wife looked over at me, somewhat alarmed, as tears started to roll down my face.

Be careful, Ryan. Shome thingsh in here don’t react well to bulletsh.

After we got home, I looked this tune up, and found that it was this stunning folk song written by Cornish native Harry Glasson. And the best version, far and away the best, is sung by locals the Oggymen, a fantastic male vocal group that does gigs and pub sings and generally just dominate any space they enter with their sublime harmonies. And this is my favourite video of them doing the song; it captures just how arresting this music can be when done in a pub:

The song has such a spiritual simplicity to it. If most people tried to write a song about their religious love for their homeland it would come out sounding hackneyed and cliche, but Glasson’s simple lyrics invoke childhood memories and a life spent loving the land:

I've left childish footsteps in the soft Sennen sand
I've chased the maids there, all giggly and tanned
I've stood on the cliff top in a westerly blow
And heard the waves thunder on the rocks far below

The “giggly and tanned” line is my favourite in the song. There is something very pure about how it invokes youthful romance and a sense of rootdness in memory.

And no one will ever move me from this land
Until the Lord calls me to sit at His hand
For this is my Eden, and I'm not alone
For this is my Cornwall, and this is my home

In a modern world full of change and mobility and rootlessness and endless innovation, this chorus hits with a real force. You can’t deny its sincerity and you can’t help but feel that the idea of home is being perfectly captured in song.

Anyway, even thjough it almost certainly isn’t your home, go to Cornwall anyway, and when you go to Cornwall, don’t bother with that touristy pish over at Tintagel Castle, where they will try to sell you £49.99 King Arthur t-shirts. Go to the Nap in Boscastle for a Jam (or a sea shanty night with the mighty Bostcastle Buoys). Roam. Be free. Sing “Wagon Wheel”.

And while you do, raise a pint to Harry Glasson and to the Oggymen: long may they run!