> Cyril Tawney > Songs > William Coombe / Crantock Games

William Coombe / Crantock Games

[ Roud 3318 ; Ballad Index Gund048 ; VWML SBG/1/3/205 , SBG/3/1/817 ; trad.]

Sabine Baring-Gould, Henry Fleetwood Sheppard, Songs of the West Inglis Gundry: Canow Kernow

Cyril Tawney sang William Coombe (Crantock Games) in 1970 on his Argo album A Mayflower Garland. This track was also included in 2007 on his posthumous anthology The Song Goes On. Tawney noted on the original album:

This moving murder ballad appears to have survived well over 200 years in Cornwall, for according to the Rev. S. Baring-Gould there is an entry in the Crantock parish register for 1721 as follows: “William Coomb of St Agnes, a youth about 20 years of age who att the ffeast att this Parish rec.d his death of a shot, buried May 17.” The song can still be heard to this day. My words are mainly those sent to Baring-Gould in 1895 by Anne Painter, of East Looe, and the tune was sung to him in 1894 by J. Libby, of Tredethy, near Bodmin.

Lyrics

Cyril Tawney sings William Coombe (Crantock Games)

Twas in the month of May, when flowers spring,
And pretty lambkins play and thrushes sing,
When young men do resort to walk about in sport,
Not thinking any harm at Crantock Games.

Crantock and Newlyn men, all in one room,
The first shot was then that caused my doom.
My name is Willy Coomb, just twenty in my bloom,
Just twenty in my bloom when I was shot.

My brother swift did fly to Truro town,
A surgeon for to find to heal my wound.
The surgeon says, ’Tis o’er, no man then can him cure,
Great pains he must endure all through the night.

Father, thy son is dead too true to hear,
Mother, don’t weep no more, oh mother dear.
Sister, don’t cry nor grieve, since there is no relief,
No warning did he give when he shot me.

My God who rules on high, behold my misery,
And take my sins away before I die.
I’ll swear until I die I was shot wilfully,
And from that wound I’ll die at Crantock Games.