Corney is Coming

It seems to be characteristic of British public life that one can only fail upwards. No matter what mess ministers and other public figures make of their jobs, they only seem to be promoted. This is not a new phenomenon. A prime example was the first Lord Cornwallis, the subject of this reel. Famous for surrendering the British army to George Washington at Yorktown, he was nevertheless dispatched to India as Governor General, where he also failed to distinguish himself, for example in the withdrawal from Seringapatam, satirized in the Gillray cartoon in this video. Unfortunately for the Irish, the law of averages meant that he had to succeed at something, and sure enough, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland he oversaw the crushing of the 1798 rebellion and the subsequent Act of Union with Britain.

[@johnwilliamson6846]

Nice reel, Richard 👍

[@richardcarver6849]

Thank you, John.

[@TheIrishMandolin]

There's a little controversy over the title of this tune. It's a great favourite of a fluter friend of mine who has been known to play it through multiple times with multiple variations accessible to players of those warbly type instruments (or, as he would have it, "proper" instruments ;-) ). One night in a session many years ago, after we'd finished a set which was rounded off by this reel there was some speculation as to the significance of the name. One player suggested that it was named after Corney Drew, he of the eponymous hornpipe. Another that it could be *any* Corney, given that Corney or Con are reasonably common familiar names for the reasonably common given name Cornelius. It was a visitor to the session in question from The Ring who put us right by stating with a good deal of authority (plausibility?) that in the far South East at least it was common knowledge that Corney refers to the folk-devil Cornwallis and, given the extent to which the South Eastern counties were instrumental in the '98 rising, it's easy to see how that link would have remained alive down through the years...