The Song of the Western Men
The Song of the Western Men is a poem by Robert Stephen Hawker from the year 1825. Known it was set to music in the form under the title And Shall Trelawney that? or short Trelawny. The melody comes from Luisa T. Clare and was written in 1861. The song is considered the unofficial anthem of the county of Cornwall, it is sung today, for example in rugby games.
The text and its historical background
The hanger for the text is imprisonment of Pelynt, Cornwall, born Sir Jonathan Trelawny (1650-1721) in 1688 in the Tower of London. Trelawny was involved with his brother Charles Trelawny on the suppression of the Monmouth Rebellion. Thanks to hit him James II in 1685 knighted and appointed him Bishop of Bristol. 1688 fell Trelawny - himself a member of the Anglican Church - in disgrace because he expressed himself along with six other bishops against Jacob's Declaration of Indulgence of 1687, which promised the Catholics religious tolerance. After three weeks of detention Trelawny was acquitted.
The three verses of the song, according to the text made up of 20,000 Cornish men on the way to free Trelawny out of the dungeon:
A good sword and a trusty hand! A merry heart and true! King James 's men Shall understand What Cornish lads can DO. And They have fixed the where and when? And Shall Trelawney that? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Will know the reason why!
From the west, they crossed the country over the Tamar and Severn towards London. The saying "one and all" refers to the motto of Cornwall:
Out spake Their Captain brave and bold: A merry wight was he: "If London Tower were Michael's hold, We'll set Trelawney free! We'll cross the Tamar, land to land, The Severn is no stay: With ' one and all', and hand in hand, And who Shall bid us nay? "
Before the walls of London, they called the men out of Jacob:
And when to we come to London Wall, A pleasant sight to view, Come forth! Come forth, ye cowards all, Here 's men as good as you. Trelawney he's in keep and hold: Trelawney hey june the: But twenty thousand Cornish bold Will know the reason why! "
Song and poem differ essentially by the add of the refrain:
And Shall Trelawney live? And Shall Trelawney that? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Will know the reason why!
Hawkers publication
Hawker published the text anonymously to The Royal Devonport Telegraph and Plymouth Chronicle, a newspaper from Plymouth, on 2 September in 1826. First it was, inter alia, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, assume that there is at the poem is a historical text handle. It was only in the issue of November 20, 1852 his Household Words Dickens wrote the words to Hawker. Historically, only the chorus lines " And Shall Trelawny are to the text that? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Will know the reason why! ", They are a traditional proverb from Cornwall. Embittered to Hawker expressed in a letter of 2 February 1862, the story of his song:
" But the history of did Ballad is suggestive of my whole life. I published it first anonymously in a Plymouth paper. Everybody liked it. It, not myself, Became popular. I was unnoted and unknown. It was seen by Mr. Davies Gilbert, President of the Society of Antiquaries, and by him reprinted at his own Private Press at Eastbourne. Then it Attracted the notice of Sir Walter Scott, who Praised it, not me, unconscious of the Author. Afterwards Macaulay (Lord ) extolled it in his ' History of England, ' and again Dickens in Household Words. All synthesis years the song HAS BEEN bought and sold, set to music and applauded, while I have lived on among synthesis far away rocks unprofited, unpraised and unknown. This is an epitome of my whole life. Others have drawn profit from my brain while I have been coolly relinquished to obscurity and unrequital and neglect. "