A powerful and deeply moving piece. It carries the full weight of Cornish identity, exile, and longing while painting vivid pictures of both the homeland and the distant mining lands.
The structure is steady and song-like, very much in the style of a ballad, fitting for the story of the Cousin Jack.
I’m Just a Cousin Jack
R J Rowse
I’m just a Cousin Jack in a land far away,
Where the sun bakes the clay, not the soft Cornish grey.
I follow the lode ‘neath a foreign, hard rock,
To the clang of the shift bell, not Lamorna’s dock.
I’m just a Cousin Jack, and I carry the load,
My heart’s back in Cornwall, though far I have roved.
The pasty I eat holds a taste of the past,
A memory of moors where the hedgerows are cast.
The kerns in the stone whisper tales of the deep,
That haunt a man’s soul in the stillness of sleep.
They promised us silver, they promised us gold,
A new life to build, a new future to hold.
So we boarded the ships with our hearts full of dread,
A pasty for luck and a prayer as we fled.
We brought our tall engines, our know-how, and pride,
To master the earth where the dark waters hide.
We sank the deep shafts through the gas and the seam,
Chasing a fortune, or chasing a dream.
I remember the gorse on the wind from the moor,
The gulls crying wild as the breakers would roar.
The engine house stood like a sentinel high,
A ghost on the skyline, a tear in the eye.
Some found their fortune, and some found their grave,
In the dust-laden dark ‘neath the continent’s wave.
We built little Cornwall’s with chapels and song,
To remember the place where our hearts still belong.
Now weary and old, when my last shift is done,
I’ll look to the west, where the sea meets the sun.
Let my spirit ride home on the Gulf Stream’s track,
To the cliffs of Penwith… just a Cousin Jack.
I’m just a Cousin Jack, and I carry the load,
But Cornwall will claim me at the end of the road.
Robert J Rowse
I was Born in Redruth, grew up near Newquay but went to school in Launceston. For the past 20+ years I have taught English as a Second Language to students in Indonesia (A modern Cousin Jack).
