The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #20172   Message #209011
Posted By: Stewie
08-Apr-00 - 08:08 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req:Damned Idle Fellows That Follow the Plough
Subject: Lyr Add: COME ALL YOU BOLD FELLOWS THAT FOLLOW...
Here's a union song with a similar title. It may be of some interest in this context:

COME ALL YOU BOLD FELLOWS THAT FOLLOW THE PLOUGH

Come all you bold fellows that follow the plough
Either hedging or ditching or milking the cow
The time has arrived and the union flag waves
We won't be kept down like a lot of white slaves

From Langport and Martock we'll meet at Stoke Cross
For the fat-bellied farmers we don't care a toss,
From Odcombe and Preston and Montacute too,
We'll come with flags flying and ribbons of blue

You may now tell the farmers you'll be slaves no more;
The starvation wages you will not endure.
Though you worked night and day, you could not satisfy
They treated you worse than a pig in a sty.

The farmers will very soon find I am sure
That a man is a man if he's ever so poor,
And no better man can in England be found
Than the hard-working man who is tilling the ground.

All England will learn of our doings today,
As in grand procession we all march away;
And the down-trodden labourers will cry as they march
May God bless our hero, the brave Joseph Arch.

From Roy Palmer 'The Painful Plough' Cambridge University Press 1972.

The Warwickshire Agricultural Labourers' Union was inaugurated in March 1872 and, in May 1872, together with union branches from 25 other counties, it became the National Agricultural Labourers' Union with Joseph Arch as its chairman. By the end of 1872, it had 100,000 members and there were 50,000 in rival unions. At the time, there were 650,000 agriculural labourers. [Paraphrase of note by Palmer].

--Stewie.