Some of you will have been following my music for decades, whilst others might have only just discovered it, so I thought it might be nice to reintroduce myself and let you know a bit more about who I am and how I got here. One of my favourite books of recent times has been Vivianne Crowley's Wild Once, where she talks about her life, her path, how she discovered her Craft - essentially who she is. I think, as our Pagan community moves forward, these kinds of books will become more and more valuable. I want to know what people do, how they feel.
So here we go!
I was born around 9 am on 16th June 1965 to two wonderful parents, Ann and Patrick Smith, in Redruth Hospital in Cornwall. I was christened David Martyn Smith in a tiny Church in the Countryside, just outside Falmouth. They had moved to Cornwall from Carshalton, along with my Mum's brother and his wife, and my Nan, to start a new business - a corner shop in the village of Devoran. The shop did well. They got it its Alcohol License, and it was very popular in the village and in the surrounding area, stocking some of the best local pasties too. Devoran was very small at that time - I went back there just last year and it's grown so much. It had just a small school, my parents' shop, the post office across the street, and a pub. It overlooked Devoran Quay and the river Fal. Old Man Martyn ran the local Plant Nursery, and he took a punt by giving Dad another job there as a delivery man. It helped so much that when I was born, they gave me the middle name of Martyn, in honour of that man, and the helping hand. I think Martyn's Nursery is still in Devoran to this day.
We moved away from Cornwall when I was only 4 years old - I had asthma and the family doctor suggested it was because of the damp Cornish air. That was rubbish, of course. I've had asthma all my life, so moving changed nothing. I've sometimes wondered how life would have been if we had remained in Cornwall. However, being born and living there planted a lifelong love of that incredibly wild and magical land within the heart of all of the Smiths. We went back to a campsite near Falmouth, just along from Maenporth beach, every year after that for our holidays.
So we moved as a family to Haywards Heath in Sussex. At that time, it was a small Mid-Sussex town where Dad had been evacuated to during the Second World War, and he had some good memories as a child there. When I went to school and we would occasionally be asked to call out where we had been born, most people said Brighton. Then it got to me and I said Redruth, Cornwall. I felt different. In a way like I didn't quite belong. I would always feel like I was going home when we got into the car for that 9-hour+ drive southwest, and when we passed the sign saying we were entering Cornwall/Kernow, I felt something like that homecoming every time. I think my Cornish heart had a lot to do with my love of myth and legend as I grew up. Of the belief in the Otherworld, in the Knockers, the Spriggans, the Piskies, the old Cornish Stone Circles, the abandoned Tin Mines, the wilderness of Bodmin Moor, the breathtaking coastline of beaches and dangerous dark stone cliffs. The legends of King Arthur, pirates and smugglers. How could all of that not have affected me as a small boy who felt such a connection to the land of his birth? I think you can hear that love in a lot of my songs.
Yes. I was a child of wilder land. Of granite cliffs, the crashing Atlantic, and the wild moor. For many years, Sussex was simply too soft for me. The hills are rolling and gentle, and made of soft chalk. The landscape was manicured by the centuries of sheep farming. The waves of the English Channel were just too small. Then my Dad began to explore his ancestry. We knew I would be the only Cornishman of recent years, but what he found surprised us all.
Dad was born in Balham in London, so he expected to find centuries of London-based ancestors. What he found was that only one generation back, all of our ancestors, for over a millennia, had been born, lived, and died in Sussex. We found we had an ancestor from the 1700s buried in Portslade cemetery, which was only one road away from my then-current house. My cousin then began to look too, taking it back further to discover that our family lived in and owned Arundel Castle in the Middle Ages. It was the old family Crib!
This knowledge did change my relationship with the land where I lived. I had generations of ancestors in the surrounding earth. It was good to finally feel at home in Sussex, but it probably took until I was about 50 years old. Have I got Cornwall out of my system? Of course not. I still climb the cliff path of Boscastle, and by the time I step to the top and look out to sea, I am crying with what the Welsh call Hiraeth. I feel it so deeply. When I needed some time away, just a couple of weeks ago, it was to Cornwall's Rocky Shores that I travelled. I will always be a Cornishman. When I heard the song Cornwall my Home when we were watching the second Fisherman's Friends film, well, I shed a tear or ten. I finally have two homes. Cornwall and Sussex, and that is a Good Thing.
I hoped you enjoyed that early life introduction. I certainly enjoyed writing it. So there will be more to come!
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