Factory Workers’ Song – Anonymous
From The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, ed. Paulin T., 1990, Faber & Faber Ltd., ISBN 0 571 170609.
Factory Workers’ Song
Come carders an spinners an wayvers as weel
stop your frames an yor jennies strip roller an creel
let you lathes cease to swing an your shuttles to fly
for theres gone through owd England a leaud battlecry –
Derry deawn!
Theyn turned eaut at Rachda an Owdham an Shay
an th’ Stalybridge lads are at Ash’n today
Fair Wage For Fair Work is the motto they’n chose
an what’ll be th’ upshot no mortal man knows –
Derry deawn!
Eaur mesthers are screwin eaur noses to th’ dust
an if we don’t strike we’n no maybe seen th’ wust
they’ve cheeant up eaur bodies to slavery’s wheel
and they’d sell if we’d let em eaur souls to the diel –
Derry deawn!
This protest song was probably written at the time of the 1842 ‘Plug Riots’ when Chartist sympathisers were able to mobilise disaffected cotton workers at a time of bad trade and short-time work. The name ‘Plug Riots’ derived from the successful ploy of stealing the plugs from the boilers at some of the cotton mills, effectively paralysing them. Ben Brierley became involved in these agitations.
The poem is entitled a ‘Song’ and it reads to me as though it were a broad sheet, to be pasted up in public and learnt by the common people. The writer would hardly want to advertise himself so it is hardly surprising that it is anonymous.
Rachda is Rochdale, Owdham is of course Oldham, Shay is Shaw (now a district of Oldham), Stalybridge is a neighbouring town and Ash’n is Ashton under Lyne. The dialect is typical of this part of east Lancashire.