Concertina: No Place for Discourtesy

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• published: 27 Oct 2015
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It is the nature, sadly, of field recording that sound quality is often not all that one might wish for. The current piece, universally catalogued as “No Place for Discourtesy” is, for example, marred by static interference which I believe was caused by the proximity to my microphone of Arthur “One Arm” Gunwalloe’s hand hook. I include this piece, audio quality notwithstanding, as an example of the work of husband and wife duo Agnes Blackwater (on harmonica) and Perranzabaloe Horningtops (on lead concertina). By the time I recorded them, Blackwater and Horningtops gave at least the appearance of living in the kind of harmony that their playing so often lacked; their path to this state of affairs however, appears to have been anything but straightforward. Horningtops, a Falmouth longshoreman by trade, first came across Agnes when she visited the town with her father (the renowned Reverend Doctor Basil Blackwater) as part of his Never Ending Circuit. Perranzabaloe watched awestruck as Agnes, standing behind her black suited, bearded giant of a father, accompanied him with strident responses on her Hohner as he testified, her playing becoming ever more impassioned as the preacher worked himself into convulsions of fiery fury at the evils of the world. As father and daughter fell to their knees before the congregation in a final tear drenched climax of railing and wailing which only ended when neither could breathe for a second longer, Horningtops swore on all that was holy that he would not rest until he had made Agnes his wife. Securing Agnes’s agreement to this plan was, I am told, surprisingly straightforward, gaining her father’s consent considerably less so. His wrath at losing his daughter to a squeezebox playing roustabout was such that the young couple were left with no option but to elope, making good their escape by way of the last wagon of the Luxulyan Slow Pick Up. They were married in a quiet ceremony at Porkellis Friend’s Hall presided over by Brother Minver Zelah who accompanied the hymn singing on a bandoneon he had liberated from a Buenos Aires bordello whilst on missionary work. For several years, it seems, Agnes and Perranzabaloe lived a contented if rootless life, working in the fields and playing for pennies on market days. When, however Horningtops was discovered to have taken up with the wife of the second assistant station master at St German’s, Agnes contrived a rapprochement with her father who, with the help of a 12 gauge shot gun and a seven man posse of lay preachers, convinced the philanderer that the flames of hell would be as nothing to the suffering he could expect should he stray from rectitude in future. Horningtops made firm and loud avowals to all who would hear that his ways had changed, and he and Agnes returned to their former life, travelling and making music together for many years to come. The seething resentment, bitterness and recrimination that flowed like sewage beneath the calm waters of the couple’s apparent respectability can be heard in their playing throughout this piece as each tries to dislocate the song’s tempo and to send the other the wrong way down overgrown and rusted musical sidings. They are accompanied by the flamboyant blind guitarist Endellion Trebetherick and his guide Arthur “One Arm” Gunwalloe on bass concertina (left side only).