Description
VALE: Carrl Myriad (aka Tregoning) D.Ua
It is with great sadness that we inform his many Celtic friends that Carrl Myriad died in Sydney, on Wednesday morning, 11 February, 2015 – after a long illness.
Carrl Myriad (Tregoning) was a great bloke and a great musician – certainly a great Celt and Cornish Australian.
His funeral will be on Tuesday 17 February at the South Chapel of the Eastern Suburbs Crematorium, Military Road, Matraville at 12.30 p.m. His Celtic friends will be most welcome.
Carrl’s story as a musician cannot be done justice here, but he was active solo, in duets and groups, and as backing musician to many touring bands during the 1960s and 70s moving onto folk and bush music. Later he was the driving force and lead singer of the Celtic group, the Ragged band, so loved of Celtic festival goers in many parts of Australia and even Japan.
For services he was awarded the Australian Celtic Honour, Duine Usal (post-nominal D.Ua)[“Honoured Person”] by the Celtic Council of Australia in 2001; and he was later given a Triquetra Achiever Award by the Australian Celtic Festival in Glen Innes.
Carrl was an honorary life member of the Cornish Association of NSW, and for some years a Cornish representative of the CCA management committee, and also on the CANSW committee.
Read this – Carrl telling his personal story in 1997:
“I was born in Melbourne and brought up on the popular culture around me, American movie and music, and television (mainly American). I started playing guitar in my teens wanting to emulate the rock heroes of the time. Then the “Folk revival” came long and swept me into a whole new musical world. I discovered songs from places I didn’t know existed. I found there were even folk songs from Australia, Eventually I was playing in a bush band, then I travelled the country writing songs about things that had happened in the places I saw, mainly bushranger stories.
Of course I was searching for my own history – for my own identity. I made an album of these songs, “Blue Outback Nights”. I felt much more fulfilled than when I had been singing American songs. I was Australian and I had my own music. But I still didn’t feel that my journey had ended. As I learned more of the Australian bush music that was playing, I discovered that a lot of it was based on Irish music. I was drawn more and more to the music – also to Scottish music. I just loved the sound of it.
Somewhere along the way I found out that my father was Cornish (I hadn’t know n him as a child). I discovered that the Cornish and the Welsh and the Bretons are the British, and the English are not!
I became completely engrossed in Celtic history and culture. I found and joined the Cornish Association of NSW. I found Cornish music, and Breton music, as if the Irish and Scottish weren’t enough; here was more, a treasure trove, and I felt part of it. The music of my ancestors, my race. Now I am learning the Cornish language. My band plays music from all the Celtic cultures and we sing some songs in Cornish, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish.
I love to pick up what I can of any of the beautiful Celtic languages that have survived so much cruel effort to wipe them out, as has Celtic identity itself. I feel now I am part of the living Celtic culture- I feel complete. Australia is my country of birth and I am of the Celtic race. Cornish (Curnoack) is my bloodline. I am Celtic/Australian or as I prefer to say, an Australian Celt.” Carrl Myriad, February, 1997.
Thank you very much Carrl, and may you live on in your music and in our hearts.
Link to a Ragged Band track, and hear Carrl’s distinctive voice:
http://www.celticcouncil.org.au/scots/Flower_of_Scotland.mp3
