Two short songs that document the wretched poverty that abounded during the British Industrial Revolution in the late 18th Century. Ewan MacColl sings the first, written in 1790, in a recording made in 1951 by Alan Lomax for the World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. Here are the lyrics for the first song, from Lancashire, which is in dialect, and the first three lines of the second song, from Yorkshire, which is much easier to understand:
I'm a four loom weaver, as many a one knows.
I've naught t'eat, and I've wore out mi clothes.
Mi clogs are both broken, and stockin's I've none.
They'd hardly give me tuppence for all I'm gettin' on
Ole Billy at Bent, he kept telling me long (i.e, for a long time)
We might have better times if I'd not but hold mi tongue.
Well, I've held mi tongue till I've near lost mi breath
And I feel in mi heart that I'll soon clem (starve) to death.
[Refrain]
Ole Billy's all right, he never will clem
And he's never picked o'er in his life. [Unclear meaning: "ne'er picked o'er" could mean "never was reduced to scrounging," probably for pieces of coal on a slag heap and "ne'er picked ore could refer to working as a lead washer in a mine. Lead mining in the north began the same year this song was written.]
The Second Song refers to lead mining:
The ore is waitin' in the tubs/The snow's upon the fell. (a barren or stony hill) Canny folk (the smart people) are sleepin' yet, but lead is reet (right) to sell, etc. The rest is clear.