He became a very respected gardener, and married a local Welsh girl, Margaret Gruffydd. Arriving in Wales as a traumatised child, he quickly became fluent in Welsh and English, and showed a natural skill for gardening. He came into the ownership of the Wynn family of the Ystumllyn estate, Gwynedd, North Wales. His real name is not known, but he was abducted as a child and trafficked into slavery. John Ystumllyn (1730s - 1786), also known as Jac Ddu, Black Jack, or Black John, an 18th century gardener, was recently honoured as the UK’s first known Black horticulturalist, with a yellow rose named after him. She will hold you safe in her soft, brown arms.

May the sun in the sky keep you from all harm. If the sea be your bed, and the waves be your pillow, Into stars, and the wind, and the sea I’ll go O I’ll send my spirit out into the darkness, He gulps foul air in the ship’s dank hold. Ripped o so cruel from his loving mother, May the arms of the ocean be cradle for thee. Thrust into a sack with babes and younglings, This song is from the perspective of his mother. The boy is buried in St Martin’s churchyard, Isles of Scilly. The list includes palm oil, several hundred elephant tusks, a box of silver dollars, two boxes of gold dust, and the body of an unknown ‘West African boy’, estimated age around 8.

A local newspaper article of the time lists some of the items washed up on shore. In the case of this ship, the exhausted captain mistook the day mark of St Martin’s for the lighthouse of St Agnes, and the ship was wrecked. The tricky waters in this area meant that many ships were wrecked. Many slave ships passed by the Isles of Scilly during the era of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (1526 - 1867 approx). It came to me as I paced up and down my local beach, wrestling with the tragic story I had just read. This was the very first of The Sorrow Songs.

Who we are nothing more lyrics