The Sing of the Shore by Lamorna Ash

Early on in my stay in Cornwall  I discovered by chance, in the Cornish history section of Penzance’s Morrab Library, a small book of Cornish sea words written in the 1960s. In the introduction by its author, R. Morton Nance, explains that it was the disappointing lack of specificity in the English Dialect Dictionary, which translated te Cornish word gijoalter vaguely as ‘part of the rigging of the ship’, that first spurred him to create his Glossary of Cornish Sea-words.

As part of his research, Nance embarked on a series of visits to every harbor in Cornwall to hear first-hand from fisherfolk ‘the old words and ways at sea as they remembered them.’ There is cabarouse – a noisy frolic and drinking bout; cowsherny – when the sea looks as if it is colored with cow dung; ouga – the stench of fish. These words, brimming with and redolent of the sea, equip me with a vocabulary with which to articulate my Cornish experiences. One night I see the whole sea prinkle as a gleaming shoal of pilchards is brought to the water’s surface; ouga follows me everywhere, gets into my nostrils, not just on the trawlers, but for many days after fishing trips. Each voyage back to the harbor is celebrated by a wild cabarouse.

But the phrase that acquires the most meaning for me is ‘the sing of the shore’- defined by Nance as ‘the sounds made by waves breaking, varying with the nature of the shore – sands, pebbles, boulders, scarped cliffs, or reefs and ledges of rocks – and thus giving the experienced fisherman an indication of his position when fog or darkness makes land invisible. As I say the phrase, I imagine old Newlyn fishermen leaning out over the bulwarks to listen for the peculiar note sung between the shore and the sea, delimiting the coastline and guiding them through  the thickest fog.

I keep a Dictaphone in my pocket and begin harvesting sounds on it. After carefully labeling each recording I add it to my museum of littoral sounds until I have built up a whole musical sphere carried in the device. Later, when I am away from Newlyn, and am craving re-immersion in the place, I hold the Dictaphone up to my ear like a shell and hear again the rage of the sea on a black night captured from the balcony of the Filadelfia, the yarns of fishermen told to me in pubs muffled by the blaring jukebox, the fish merchants yelling prices in the early morning auction, the scuffle of pebbles as I make my way across a quiet beach on a wind-rent day. As I listen Newlyn becomes visible to me once more, the sing of the shore continuing to ring outwards.

There are two paths out of Newlyn to Land’s End. One leads up beside by main road to Penlee Point and the other down to the sea, where you find a rocky shore on one side and a concrete wall dense with graffiti- together with a half-roof structure to retreat under in a sudden shower- on the other.

{the author’s final paragraph of this chapter:}

I take the lower path. There is no one else around apart from an elderly woman in a dark coat down to her ankles and a long brown plait snaking down her back. She seems not to notice me as she looks straight out at the sun-dashed water, her feet practically curled over the edge of the rocks that border the sea. For a moment I consider turning around and going back the way I’ve come, but when I catch sight of a slender object raised to her lips, from which comes a haunting sound , I find myself compelled towards her. As I near her, I recognize from the kind of sound and then the woman’s finger movements that the object is a small wooden recorder and that the woman is plying her melody directly to the sea. I move closer until I am standing right behind her shoulders, listen to her play. The woman does not break from her music or take her eyes off the sea for even a second and I wonder if she is aware of my presence at all.

I listen to her for a long whole, her music filling the space between the sea and land; a woman looking at  a woman looking to the sea. I let my gaze follow hers, to where all the eyes of Cornwall cannot help but turn. And as I look, there are word as contained within the waves, etched out in shimmering lines, and I read them as an incantation produced by the woman’s wordless song. When they touch the clefts of the cliffs or pour into the sand these words are deposited there in small pieces. All that the sea comes into contact with has terraces of these incantations, in the same was music is scratched onto a records. This is how the water tries to tell us its ways.

I leave the lone figure enacting her own sing of the shore back to the waves – “I am here. This is my nature. Are you Listening?– and continue up to where the paths meet once more on the way to Land’s End

{My edited version of her final paragraph of this passage:}

[I took the lower path. There was no  one else around apart from an elderly woman in a dark coat down to her ankles and a long brown plait snaking down her back. She seemed not to notice me as she looked straight out at the sun-dashed water, her feet  curled over the rocks that border the sea. For a moment I considered  turning around and going back the way I’d come, but when I caught sight of a slender object raised to her lips, and its   haunting sound, I was compelled towards her. She was playing a small wooden recorder , her music filling  the space between the sea and the land. I let my gaze follow hers to where all eyes in Cornwall cannot help but turn and heard in the woman’s music the incantation  the words of the waves etched out in simmering lines, touching the clefts of the cliffs and poured  piece by piece into the sand:

“I am here. This is my nature. Are you listening?’ ]