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The Journey of a Droll Teller Project
For my final year at University, I had planned to create a project that focused on Cornish folktales and the history behind them. Folktales and superstitions have always been a fascination of mine so I decided to look into the history of Cornwall to see what I could uncover.
Many years before the industrial revolution, there were a group of people called ‘Droll Tellers.’ Droll is the Cornish word for story, so they were known as story tellers. Their job was to travel around Cornwall with a fiddle in hand to retell the stories of ‘Old Cornwall’ in order to keep the tales alive. They did this either through traditional storytelling or song and dance. Droll tellers would make this journey once or twice a year; as walking around Cornwall on foot would have been no easy feat.
As I researched further into the tales themselves, I had noticed that each location the droll tellers would have visited had their own unique story. I was so intrigued by these tales that I had to make a photographic project around it. I thought that other people should know about this interesting part of Cornish culture.
Unfortunately, droll tellers began to diminish after the industrial revolution and the subject hasn’t had much attention in recent years. So, I brought it upon myself to revive this tradition by bringing it into the modern era through the use of photography. I decided to take the same journey around Cornwall, photographing the landscapes I saw as I travelled along. By adding a visual element to these tales, I am able to add history and character to an already scenic landscape.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to complete this project due to the pandemic, but it is something I hope to pick back up when things return to normal.
Here are a few of those tales:
Around the end of the First World War, mysterious lights were said to be seen across the open water.
Whilst out at sea, a Cornish fisherman had drowned as a result of a German Submarine.
As an act of revenge for his death, the ghost of the fisherman would create flashes of light that could only be sighted by German Ships and Submarines.
Like the lamps of the old wreckers, the mysterious lights lured the German ships to destruction as they would unwittingly crash into the rocky cliff-face.
- Mousehole had been suffering through one of the worst storms that winter so the fishermen were unable to catch any fish for weeks and the people of Mousehole were starving.
- On the day before Christmas Eve, there was a local fisherman called Tom Bawcock who decided to venture out to sea and try to catch something so the people could eat.
- He thought it would be better to risk drowning whilst catching something rather than starving to death by doing nothing.
- Although he had trouble navigating the rough waves, every one of his seven hooks had a fish.
- Everyone cheered on his arrival, they took the seven sorts of fish and created a great fish and potato pie.
- They decorated the pie by placing the fish heads in the middle and the tails sticking out of the edge of the crust and thus it was called Stargazy Pie.
- Since that day they celebrate the 23rd of Decmeber as Tom Bawcock’s Eve and they always eat Starygazy Pie
- St Michael’s Mount was built as a home by the giant Cormoran and his wife Cormelian.
- They lived in the forests now submerged underneath Mounts Bay,
- The boulders in the landscape were said to have been thrown by Cormoran in fights with another giant
- Cormelian was forced by her husband to carry the heavy stones in her apron pockets in order to build St Michael’s Mount
- Once night when Cormoran was asleep she decided to carry a lighter green stone instead but he awoke and caught her cheating.
- This angered him so he kicked her and her apron strings broke.
- She dropped the greenstone and it broke into many pieces.
- Pieces of the green stone can still be seen on the causeway leading to the mount.
- The Tale of the Sea Bucca describes the being as having the dark brown skin of a conger eel with a mound of seaweed hair.
- He was once a human prince who got cursed by a witch
- He helped local fishermen by driving fish towards their net
- In return, the fishermen left fish on the beach to appease him
- These offerings were common throughout the 19th century in Newlyn and Mousehole.
- Knockers are notorious creatures that inhabit the various mines around Cornwall
- Some believe they are spirits of miners lost in accidents; others believe they are little creatures who play practical jokes on miners.
- Depending on which you believe, knockers are seen to be either helpful creatures or malevolent.
- As the name suggests, knockers will knock on the walls of mines to either warn miners of an impending collapse of the mine or to trap miners in a collapse.
- No matter what their opinion was, miners would always leave small amounts of a pasty behind to keep them happy.