Luddite Culture

 The Centres of Yorkshire Luddism

1] Almondbury & Castle Hill 2] Milnsbridge 3] Warren House 4] Rawfolds 5] Hartshead 6] Dumb Steeple 7 Three Nuns 7] The Shears 8] The Yew Tree 9] The Star 10] Brighouse and Raistrick 11] Bradley Woods 

The Luddites left a few songs behind them.     These were probably closely related to and derived from existing traditional songs.   In the case of ‘The Cropper Lads’ the words are strongly linked to a poaching song transmitted to the 20th century by the Norfolk singer Walter Pardon: ‘The Poacher’s Fate’ which opens with the words:

though the tune is entirely different.

  https://mainlynorfolk.info/watersons/songs/thepoachersfate.html

Theo Simon traces ‘The Croppers  Song’  to John  Walker:

This song was written by John Walker following the first 2 successful operations of the West Riding Luds. He sang it at a meeting of Huddersfield workers at the Shears Inn, Hightown, in February 1812, right before they marched out to Hartshead Moor to attack wagons transporting shearing frames.

http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/mr-luds-song

though without providing references.   Kevin Binfield traces the attribution back to Frank Peel’s The Rising of the Luddites, Chartists and Plug-drawers, of 1895 (Binfield, p 201)

https://mainlynorfolk.info/louis.killen/songs/thecropperlads.html

Performance: Folly Hall 2007: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re5S3UQe1L8

'And when at night, when all is still

And the moon is hid behind yon hill,

We still advance to do our will'

Sunset in the hills above Marsden.  Night belonged to the Luddites...

"The Triumph Of General Ludd"

No more chant your old rhymes about old Robin Hood

His feats I do little admire,

I'll sing the achievements of General Ludd,

Now the hero of Nottinghamshire.

Brave Ludd was to measures of violence unused

'till his sufferings became so severe,

That at last to defend his own interest he rose

And for the great fight did prepare.

The guilty may fear but no vengeance he aims

At the honest man's life or estate,

His wrath is entirely confined to wide frames

And to those that would prices abate.

Those engines of mischief were sentenced to die

By unanimous vote of the trade

And Ludd who can all opposition defy

Was the grand executioner made.

And when in the work he destruction employs,

Himself to no method confines,

By fire and by water he gets them destroyed

For the elements aid his designs.

Whether guarded by soldiers along the highway

Or closely secured in a room,

He shivers them up by night and by day

And nothing can soften their doom.

Ye may censure great Ludd's disrespect for the laws

Who ne'er for a moment reflects

That foul imposition alone was the cause

Which produced these unhappy effects.

Let the haughty the humble no longer oppress

Then shall Ludd sheath his conquering sword,

His grievances instantly meet with redress

Then peace shall be quickly restored.

Let the wise and the great lend their aid and advice,

Nor e'er their assistance withdraw,

Till full-fashioned work at the old-fashioned price

Is established by custom and law.

Then the trade when this arduous contest is o'er

Shall raise in full splendor its head

And colting and cutting and swearing no more

Shall deprive all his workers of bread.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/chumbawamba/thetriumphofgeneralludd.html

Performance Roy Harris 1972: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywNOr-Tx-B8

'No more chant your old rhymes about old Robin Hood'

Although Robin Hood's grave is supposedly at Kirklees, near Huddersfield, 

according to the Geste of Robyn Hode he mostly carries out his robberies in Barnsdale, north of  Doncaster.

The ballad refers to this area as 'the Sayles', where Watling Street would have dipped sharply into a valley.  Travelers would have been slow-moving easy targets for outlaws.   It is now crossed by a motorway bridge carrying the A1 across the River Went past Wentbridge . 

 ‘Foster’s Mill’

Come, all you croppers stout and bold,

Let your faith grow stronger still,

For the cropper lads in the county of York

Have broken shears at Foster’s Mill.

Oh, around, around we all do stand

And firmly swear we will,

We’ll break the shears and windows too

And we’ll all set fire to Foster's Mill.

Come, all you croppers stout and bold,

Let your faith grow stronger still,

For the cropper lads in the county of York

Have broken shears at Foster’s Mill.

Oh, drear and dark it is the day

When a man has to fight for his bread;

Some judgment sure will clear the way

And the poor to triumph shall be led.

Come, all you croppers stout and bold,

Let your faith grow stronger still,

For the cropper lads in the county of York

Have broken shears at Foster’s Mill.

http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Swan_Arcade:Foster%27s_Mill

Performance: Swan Arcade 1973: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2C1h4nxFJM

Foster's Mill was on Engine Lane at Horbury Bridge, 2016.

 The lane was not named after the railway line that lies behind where this picture was taken but after the steam engine that powered 

Foster's Mill in 1795.   The factory was not rebuilt after the Luddites destroyed it.  The picture shows one of the small modern works on the site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horbur

The Swan Arcade song is a synthesis of two songs printed by Binfield; the stanza in italics has been imported from another song.

The first is ‘Horsfall’s Mill’

Come all you croppers stout and bold

Let your faith grow stronger still,

For the cropper lads in the County of York,

Have broke the shears at Horsfall’s Mill.

The [y?] broke the shears and the windows too,

Set fire to the tazzling mill;   [a tazzling or gig mill was a factory of machines that raised the nap of woven cloth] 

They formed themselves all in a line,

Like soldiers at the drill.

The wind it blew and the sparks they flew,

Which alarmed the town full soon,

And out of bed poor folk did leave,

And they ran by the light o’ the moon;

When these lads around the mill did stand,

And they all did vow and swear,

Neither bucket nor can nor any such thing,

Should be of any service there.

(Y1, Binfield, p 201)

Engine Lane is now semi-occupied by light industries.  it is not on the Luddite Trail...

This song is evidently related to the shorter

‘Forster’s Mill’ (aka ‘Foster’s Mill’)

Come all you croppers stout and bold

Let your faith grow stronger still,

For the cropper lads in the County of York,

Broke the shears at Forster’s Mill.

The wind it blew,

The sparks they flew,

Which alarmed the town full soon,

And out of bed poor people did creep,

And ran by the light o’ the moon;

And around and around they all did stand,

And solemnly did swear,

Neither bucket nor kit nor any such thing,

Should be of assistance there.

(Y10, Binfield, p 218) 

There verses appear in Frank Peel’s The Risings of the Luddites (p 62) https://archive.org/details/risingsluddites01peelgoog

‘Forster’s Mill’ looks as if it has lost a couple of lines that would make the short couplet ‘the wind it blew,/The sparks they flew,’ into part of a quatrain.

The verse in italics in the Swan Arcade version is part of what appears to be a different song: ‘A very short song fragment recorded by Peel’, (Binfield, p 226).

How gloomy and dark is the day

When a man have to fight for their bread;

Some judgment will sure clear the way

And the poor shall to triumph be led.

(Y16, Binfield, p 226)

Peel links these words to another quatrain collected from ‘an intelligent, bight eyed old lady’ of ‘nearly four score’ :

How gloomy and dark is the day

When a man have to fight for their bread;

Some judgment will sure clear the way

And the poor shall to triumph be led.

Come listen to this, my sad story,

Of woe be to valour most brave.

While some have escap’d up to glory,

The tyrant hangs over the grave.

(Peel, 1880, p 62) https://archive.org/details/risingsluddites01peelgoog

'They broke the shears and the windows too,

Set fire to the tazzling mill;'

This would not be easy at New Mill (or 'New Mills') Marsden, c1876. 

A substantial boundary wall demarks its territory and deters attack.  

Kevin Binfield includes a dialect song from Daisy Baines, the Luddite’s Daughter as a possible traditional song: ‘T’ Three Cropper Lads o’ Honley’.   Brookes and Kipling cite Lesley Abernethy as considering  ‘its authenticity unlikely,’ (Brookes/Kipling, p125).   This opinion can be reinforced by textual analysis of the opening stanza:

Three cropper lads o’ Gairner shop –

          Sim, Rube an’ Squentin Jimmy,

Ne’er cared a slart for coffee slop

If they could ha’ some Timmy;

They cropp’d an’ swet an’ swigg’d ther ale,

Wi’ gullets like a Greenland whale,

An’ seldom did owt else but sail

I’Timmy – boout  o’ t’ Tuesdays.

Hurrai! my lads fill up t’ brim!

An’ drink whol booath yer leets ur dim  

 To Squentin Jimmy, Rube an’ Sim, 

T’ three cropper lads o’ Honley’.

Firstly heavy dialect and local slang tends to be rare in traditional verse.  There are exceptions, such as the songs written in the North East Miners’ ‘pitmatic’ slang by the miner Tommy Armstrong, but the language of  ‘T’ Three Cropper Lads o’ Honley’ has nothing in common with Luddite songs collected at the time.  

Secondly it is hard to think of a traditional tune that would fit the verse pattern of T’ Three Cropper Lads o’ Honley’.  By contrast the other Luddite songs will fit several traditional tunes apart from the ones they have been paired with. 

'Squentin Jimmy, Rube an’ Sim, 

T’ three cropper lads o’ Honley’.

These cobbled street in modern Honley look as if they date from Luddite times , but they may be no older than the Church.

The present Church of St Mary's was built in 1843 to replace a 1759 church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honley

Binfield points out, especially in the Midlands section, about how Luddite songs easily shade off into general songs complaining about hardship. Binfield gives the example of ‘Hunting A Loaf’ (M35, Binfield, p 135).  Perhaps the line dividing these songs from Luddite songs is the fact the former were printed and sold commercially and the latter were not.    ‘Hunting a Loaf’ is not afraid to mention actual people and events but carefully distances itself from approval of actions like Luddism:

For Derby it’s true, and Nottingham too,

Poor men to the jail they’ve been taking,

They say that Ned Ludd as I understood,

A thousand wide frames has been breaking.

It mentions the assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval without explicitly endorsing the act:

Then I thought it was time to speak to the prime

Master Perceval would take my part,

But a Liverpool man soon ended the plan,

With a pistol he shot through his heart.

(M35, Binfield, p 136)

A more general song about the hardships of weavers in the early years of the 19th century is:

‘I’m A Four-loom Weaver’

I'm a four-loom weaver as many a one knows;

I've nowt to eat and I've worn out me clothes.

My clogs are both broken and stockings I've none;

You'd scarce give me tuppence for owt I've gotten on.

Old Billy o't' Bent he kept telling me long

We might have better times if I'd nobbut hold my tongue.

I've holden me tongue till I've near lost my breath

And I feel in me own heart I'll soon clem to death.

I'm a four-loom weaver as many a one knows;

I've nowt to eat and I've worn out me clothes.

Old Billy's awreet, he never were clemmed

And he never picked o'er in his life.

We held on for six weeks, thought each day were the last;

We've tarried and shifted till now we're quite fast.

We lived upon nettles while nettles were good

And Waterloo porridge was the best of ours food.

I'm a four-loom weaver as many a one knows;

I've nowt to eat and I've worn out me clothes.

Me clogs are both broken, no looms to weave on,

And I've woven meself to far end.

https://mainlynorfolk.info/june.tabor/songs/fourloomweaver.html

Performance Swan Arcade 1990: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJLtN1RTZ7Y

'We might have better times'

Bank's Mill, Marsden

The mills that dominated the lives of so many weavers and communities have mostly fallen out of use.

The expensive problem of what to do with vast structures that are slowly falling apart is of vital concern for the towns that house them.

http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/marsden-new-mills-bottom-bank-8631406

The songs of the Luddites have proved popular amongst the singers involved in the British folk revival from the 1950s onward, fitting in well with the left-wing politics of the revival.    However, unlike other songs reflecting labourers’ discontent, especially poaching songs, none of the Luddite songs seem to have survived into the twentieth or twenty first century in the repertoire of traditional singers.  Poaching was an issue that affected all of the rural poor in Britain, whereas machine breaking was confined to the industrial urban midlands and north.  The issues connected with poaching dated back to the Norman conquest whilst the industrial discontent focused around ‘Ned Ludd’ lasted only a few years.   

As labourers gradually moved from the countryside to work in factories, they moved into a pattern of work less conducive for an oral tradition.   Artisans were no longer working in small family groups, like the hand-loom weavers of Calderdale or the knitters of Dentdale, in quiet houses where songs and stories could be shared; they were working in large factories dominated by the noise of industrial machinery.    Factory labourers were no longer working seasonally with hours determined by the available light but in regular shifts in mills whose machines never stopped except in cases of trade depression or strike.  Not only were their fewer opportunities to sing but the rural work songs that form the bulk of collections like that of the Copper Family had lost their relevance. 

There is April, there is May, there is June and July

What a pleasure it is for to see the corn grow.

In August we will reap it, we will cut, sheaf and bind it

And go down with our scythes for to mow.

‘Two Young Brethren’

http://www.thecopperfamily.com/songs/coppersongs/brethren.html

Industrial work is not restricted by the seasons or by day and night; it creates its own rhythms.

'And go down with our scythes for to mow'

Since WWII human rhythms have been lost in the countryside as agriculture has been industrialised.

Here a tractor works a field next to Hoober's Stand, a wood north-east of Rotherham.

Agricultural machines are frequently fitted with spotlights so they can work at night. 

http://bloombergphotos.tumblr.com/post/93313803036/blue-sky-at-night-harvest-delight-the-powerful

Out of the Luddite songs listed above ‘The Cropper Lads’ is the song that the novelists adopted. 

In Ben o’ Bills the Luddites sing it before they go out to drill (Chp IV, p 94).

In Inheritance it is sung at a Luddite gathering in the Moorcock.  Joe Bamforth whistles the tune as the ‘men thundered out the chorus in their hearty Yorkshire voices, some singing seconds, and Tom Thorpe taking a falsetto version of his own which made them all laugh,’( Bk I, Ch III p67).  There is a strong tradition of harmony singing (‘singing seconds’) in Yorkshire which survives today mostly in the carols sung in pubs around the South Pennines:  http://www.villagecarols.org.uk/

Performance: Villagers at the Blue Ball Worral, Sheffield sing ‘Mount Moriah’ (‘Glory to God’) 2011:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWsReXUuTUo

In Ned Carver in Danger the Iredale croppers sing ‘Come cropper lads of high renown’ and the Hudley men answer them by singing ‘Come all ye croppers stout and bold’ (Chp 5, p 86)

Apart from modern groups of the folk revival enthusiastically keeping alive Luddite songs, Luddism has inspired contemporary songwriters:

The Trees song ‘While the Iron is Hot’, on the album On the Shore, links the Luddites: ‘broke the shears at Foster’s Mill’ with other fighters for workers’ rights such as the Tolpuddle Martyrs: ‘fought to make our union strong’.  On the Shore, CBS, 1971 64168.

 In 2006 the folk-rock band Steeleye Span continued the theme by including a 'Ned Ludd' song-cycle, whose five songs deal with enclosure, industrialisation, Luddism and the Peterloo Massacre. (Bloody Men, Park Records, 2006) 

Alastair Roberts 2009 album Spoils contains ‘Ned Ludd’s Rant [for a world rebarbarised]’  (Greendoor Studios)

The oldest building left in Engine Lane, standing by the entrance off Bridge Road.

Come all you croppers stout and bold

Let your faith grow stronger still,

For the cropper lads in the County of York,

Broke the shears at Forster’s Mill.