In the early 1800's cotton was spun in the mills. Saddleworth still has the three story houses with the better-lit hand-loom weavers' lofts. Were they weaving cotton or wool? Saddleworth, though then in Yorkshire, was a cotton area by the 1900's. (The rest of Yorkshire over the Pennines did wool - though there was a woollen mill, spinning I think, in Greenfield until the 1960's.)

By the 1900's, and to the end of the industry, the south-east Lancashire mills spun cotton but the weaving was done in factories north of Rossendale.

So I wonder if there ever were any mechanized four loom weavers in the area where the early songs get there placenames from. Some historian of the cotton famine - or student of it's songs - will know.