Cornish Ghosts video

Uses the studio recording as soundtrack

‘Cornish Ghosts’ is a song I started writing when I first knew I was moving to the area, specifically near Trencrom (or Trecobben) Hill. The article on Cornish Story (as mentioned here) gives the lyric and a link to a recording, but also a shedload of historical background. (About the hill, not about me!) It then diverges into some notes about Richard Hambly, a 19th-century poet who lived in Hayle (Heyl) and wrote a poem about the hill, which is also included in the article.

This video is a slide show with the Bandcamp recording as a sound track. It isn’t a lyric video, though, so here is the lyric, but not the background information given in the Cornish Story article.

Cornish Ghosts

Close to where I stand on Trecobben
Pilgrims walk St. Michael’s Way
Few today reach Santiago
Most will cease their journey at the Bay
The Mount is rising from the distant water
Yet barely seems an arm’s length away

Causley on the road to Marazion
Dreamed of one last summer in the Med
Sheets are dancing Morris in the wind
A buzzard slowly circles overhead
Engine houses march along the skyline
A sea fret daubs the coast in brown and red

Beyond the darkening horizons
Beyond the hills to the West
Beyond Pendeen and Cape Cornwall
The Longships founder off Land’s End
Sea nymphs and mermaids pluck the heartstrings
But the bells no longer ring in Lyonesse

Around me march the ghosts of long-dead armies
Recalled among these ancient stones
The engine house beyond the farm
Still offers shelter to the crows
I watch the sun sink slowly to the West
Back into the sea from whence it rose

Words & music © David Harley.