"Come, all ye jolly tinner boys" is a traditional
folk song
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
associated with
Cornwall
Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...
that was written about 1807, when
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...
made threats that would affect trade in Cornwall at the time of the
invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...
. The song contains the line ''Why forty thousand Cornish boys shall knawa the reason why.''
According to Cornish historian
Robert Morton Nance, it was possibly the inspiration for
R. S. Hawker's "
The Song of the Western Men" which was written in 1824 and contains a strikingly similar line: ''Here's twenty thousand Cornish men will know the reason why!''
Lyrics
A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs (1850) By James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps
/ref>
References
External links
The Reason Why
article from ''Old Cornwall'' by Robert Morton Nance.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Come, All Ye Jolly Tinner Boys
Cornish folk songs
Cornish patriotic songs