MIZZLE ON THE CAMEL

ARCHIVE RECORD: KERN-044 // MIZZLE ON THE CAMEL

Recovered from the entirely fictional Kernow Records archive, Mizzle on the Camel presents The Wadebridge Washboard Orchestra in full damp-weather form: washboard, spoons, tea chest bass, cider-warmed chorus, and a heroic refusal to let poor visibility spoil a good tune.

This is not part of the principal folklore cycle of saints, dragons, ghosts, and drowned kingdoms. It belongs to the smaller, sillier shelf beside it: Cornish dialect, local weather, village humour, mining words, parish mishaps, and the kind of regional novelty single that might plausibly have turned up in a dusty box marked 45 R.P.M. MONO.

Side A salutes the persistent mizzle around the River Camel: not quite fog, not quite rain, but perfectly capable of making Padstow, the harbour, the laundry, and most of the known world disappear.

Side B follows the unfortunate Jan of Egloshayle: a loud kusser, a stubborn stager, and a man whose journey to the fair is undone by flisky weather, slubby lanes, hot cider, fallen pasties, and entirely predictable local chaos.

FIELD NOTES:

Mizzle on the Camel: A rowdy West Country answer to grander fog-bound anthems elsewhere: damp air, vanishing harbours, wandering tourists, wet trousers, stubborn laundry, and the noble art of calling it a day when visibility drops to thirty-odd feet.

The Great Kusser-Stager of Egloshayle: A comic B-side concerning boastfulness, weather, mud, fair-day disaster, scalding cider, pasties lost to the dogs of the parish, and the dangers of acting the grand fellow when the lane itself has other plans.

THE OBSCURE VOCABULARY USED

Kusser: A prize stallion, but colloquially used here for a loud, boastful, swaggering chap.

Stager: A stubborn, old-fashioned, or difficult person.

Slubby: Thick, gelatinous mud or slush; worse than standard muck.

Skaw-d’d: Scorched, scalded, or badly burned, especially by hot tea or cider.

Frith: A light wattle fence, or a state of tangled, messy confusion.

Tummals: Great heaps, large quantities, or massive portions, usually of food.

Flisky: A light, irritating, driving mist that keeps changing direction.

// END OF RECORD
MIZZLE, MUD, HAG WASHBOARD
A Kernow Records curiosity in glorious monophonic damp.