I was searching for a specific folk song by Brenda Wootton about the chemist Humphry Davy when I found a different folk song about Humphry Davy by Brenda Wootton: here she performs "Opie, Davy, Foote, Trevithick and Bone" with an untrained British children's choir. The song patriotically praises some celebrities from Cornwall who lived in the 1700s and 1800s. The five men in the title are mentioned repeatedly throughout the song, but only by their last names. I only knew Davy when I first heard it, and I thought it was funny that I had no idea about the other four Cornish heroes who were so great and reputable that they didn't need to be named in full. Look on our Cornish works, ye mighty, and despair! I tried looking up the other men, and it took a while, especially because some of the feats listed in the song (such as "Who was it sailed 'The Mystery' round the world?") weren't performed by any of them. Besides Humphry Davy, who needs no introduction, we have John Opie, a portraitist, and Samuel Foote, a playwright and comedic actor, then Richard Trevithick, a pioneer of steam engines and railway locomotives, and Bone (♫ Bone Bone Bone / Bone Bone Bone Bone ♫) is perhaps Henry Bone, an enamel painter who was employed by three successive British kings.
By process of elimination on the lines of the song which do seem to refer to the title heroes, Bone should be the hero who "filled the sky with thunder", presumably by inventing some kind of explosive material or ore crushing machine or other loud thing that would be used in the mines. But there is no such Bone. I'm sorry, children of Cornwall. I'm sorry to steal your thunder. Also, reportedly, it was a Cornish national who set the world asunder. So now you, dear reader, know whom to blame for that. Dick move, Cornwall.
