Origins: Poverty Knock

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 16 May 17 - 04:32 AM

"cop
A yarn package spun on a mule or ring spindle. A paper, cardboard, wooden, plastic or metal tube is used as the core of the package."

from weaving terminology

Not an expert on weaving btw!!

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Senoufou
Date: 16 May 17 - 04:22 AM

(Totally irrelevant)
My Irish mother used to call hiccups 'Hunger Knock'.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 16 May 17 - 04:04 AM

Interesting as I always that "tarn" was a body of water like a lake or mill type reservoir ~ but this certainly puts a different slant on the verse

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 15 May 17 - 08:51 PM

A little more:

We have a pirn or cop in our possession and we just looked at it. It is closed at one end. The other end is open so it can slide down over a rod attached to the shuttle.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 15 May 17 - 08:45 PM

We are presenting a workshop at the San Francisco Free Folk Festival on June 10. We have done this workshop many times but it has been a while so we were refreshing what's left of our brains on the subject of the textile industry in England where all this started.

We came across a passage in a pamphlet entitled, "Looms and Weaving" by Anna Benson and Neil Warburton, published in 1986 which says, "The most unpopular aspect of woollen handloom weaving was wetting weft cops to facilitate close packing of the weft threads. Cops of yarn were immersed in cold water and the weaver sucked water through them with a wooden tube. "

This may explain the mysterious verse in "Poverty Knock" that says:

We've got to wet our own yarn,
By dippin' it into the tarn
It's wet an' soggy and makes us feel groggy,
and there's mice in that dirty old barn.

A cop, or pirn, was a long, narrow bobbin which held the weft thread. It fit inside the shuttle which carried it across the warp threads, the action being called a "pick". After each pick, the last weft thread was packed, or "beaten up", against the previous weft threads by a comb-like device. Apparently, when wool (or at least certain kinds of wool) was being used, proper packing could only be achieved when the yarn or thread was wet. Since the yarn was already wound onto the cop, the whole thing had to be dipped into the "tarn" which we infer was some kind of vessel that held the water. Then, in order to wet the yarn all the way through, a wooden tube was attached to the center hole of the cop while blocking up the other end somehow. Then, when one sucked on the tube, a partial vacuum was created inside the cop which drew in the water all the way to the center of the winding. Continuous sucking on the tube could easily have made one dizzy or, as the song says, groggy.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 06 Jan 17 - 05:01 AM

I recorded Poverty knocks from Mick Haywood in 2006 for the yorkshire garland song db ~ sung by Mick Haywood who was a good friend of Tom Daniel~ I note that the notes by Steve Gardham show this as traditional ~ relevant comments mainly above

The mainly norfolk is a good supplement for the provenance ~ Pete Coe's instrumental accompaniment is really a lament ~ surely the mill girls would have hit this song much harder, more of a protest and the traditional knock knock would be and should be loud as Tommy himself would have done! ~ Pete has lost the regional dialect ~ which obviously grates with me (West Yorkshire)

check yorkshire folk song/Yorkshire Garland ~ note Mick Haywood and Wendy Price still alive in Whitby, first hand authorities on Tom Daniel

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 05 Jan 17 - 07:15 PM

Chumbawamba on YOUTUBE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7syQl-2l1Y

mainly Norfolk:
https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/povertyknock.html

Thomas.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: leeneia
Date: 05 Jan 17 - 11:55 AM

I had to laugh at this in the second post. "the book Victoria's Inferno."

It's a clear example of a common cliche - put in a woman and make it her fault.

Queen Victoria didn't have any mills.   Mills were owned, operated and supervised by men. Victoria and her husband, Albert, felt more concern for the poor of the nation than did the men who were on the scene, exploiting them.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 05 Jan 17 - 09:17 AM

Might never know about that Kathy ~ probably made up by the mill girls or even Tommy

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,kathy
Date: 05 Jan 17 - 06:39 AM

I have had doubts cast on the validity of the verse where the yarn is dipped in the "tarn". Is it part of the original song, or a verse that was added later?

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 02 Oct 12 - 04:56 AM

Thanks Rob and Andy for clarification and confirmation re "Knocks" and cock and ass song

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Sugwash
Date: 02 Oct 12 - 04:48 AM

I learnt the Cock and the Ass from Mick Haywood, I believe Mike Harding got it from the same source.

I've always thought it was Irish in origin, but when I sang it in a pub in Culfin it was met with total stunned silence that only needed some tumble weed to complete the scene.

Andy Sugden

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 02 Oct 12 - 04:30 AM

r.padgett: Poverty Knock interesting re rent man, as the noise of the loom has been questioned!

Never heard anything about the rent man, and ALL my female relatives of my mother's generation, both sides of the family, were "Poverty Knockers", some for a short time, most for all of their working lives.

As I said above a couple of years ago, the old-model Yorkshire *woollen* mill looms (as opposed to Lancastrian cotton looms)definitely made a sound that could be rendered as "poverty knock". I've heard them! My relatives always said that that's why they were called Poverty Knockers.

And the clincher is that Yorkshire people, particularly in the West Riding, however hard they struggled, would never admit to being in "poverty"...it's one thing to refer in humour to the sound a loom makes, another entirely to personalise the poverty to the knock of a rent man. My eldest aunt was denied the chance of a grammar school education, even though she passed the exams, because my grandparents would have had to get financial help to be able to buy the uniform. Such help *was* available, but there was NO WAY they'd ever consider asking for "charity". If they couldn't pay their way they went without. And that went for the whole village. So my auntie Nora went into t' mill rather than doing what she's always dreamed of and becoming a teacher.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 01 Oct 12 - 04:31 AM

Yes I sing the Cock and The Ass, and Mike Harding had a similar song, I don't know about his provenance, but assumed that he had infact embroided the original TD song (dunt know really)

There was an old woman a likely old lass who wandered round batley with a cart and a ass, every day her living to mek, this old woman mucky washing did tek with me fal de rol lol, fal di rol lol, fol di rol fol de rol fol de rol day

There was an old man whose knees they did knock, altho a small man he'd a large Red Rhode Island cock etc~~~~~~

lol
Ray
Yes please re EFDSS ta!

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Sep 12 - 03:22 PM

The Cock and the Ass sounds familiar. Is it the same as The Old Woman and her Ass? Don't know if EFDSS have any of Tommy's stuff but I'll be there next week and I could ask.

I presume we need that extra verse of PK for the YG website. Do you want me to add it in? If so I'll need to include your proper name Ebor Fiddler. If you don't want folk to know you can pm me.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 30 Sep 12 - 02:22 PM

Does EFDDS have any songs Steve?

I had that that copy of Long Tom also, need atune

What about the Cock and The Ass? was that Tommy's (dunt google it anyone! lol)

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Sep 12 - 10:43 AM

We've got copies of Tommy's little booklet but it only contains the usual 5 songs and very little in the way of provenance.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,Ebor_Fiddler
Date: 29 Sep 12 - 12:55 PM

I only remember the chorus, and that in my innocence, #I had to have the phrase "Knocking shop" explained to me. The tune is Poverty Knock.

"Eighteenpence on the bed,
Pleasure for single or wed.
There's none so many
as pretty young Jenny
For eighteenpence on the bed."

Pure and uncorrupted, twelve to the shilling pence of course.

Sorry I can't be of more help. Did Tommy not do some self-publishing or something? Has my brain totally slipped its cogs?

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 29 Sep 12 - 02:52 AM

Thanks Mick, will go with your definition!

Ebor "Eighteen pence on the bed" do you have the words to this please?

Do you mean that eighteen pence is the samne tune as Poverty Knocks?

Dunt remember Tommy in the Star, but it was a favourite early pub, next to Seamens Mission virtually

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,Ebor_Fiddler
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 07:55 PM

Does anybody except me remember Tommy standing on a chair in The Star (in Haggersgate, Whitby) bawling it out, (as well as "Eighteen Pence On The Bed" to the same tune) while we all joined in the chorus, during the then EFDSS Whitby Folk Festival?

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 09:15 AM

OED: guttle v. 1654 [fr GUT sb. after GUZZLE v.] 1. intr. To eat voraciously; to gormandize. 2. trans. To devour or swallow greedily 1685. Hence Guttler, a glutton; a gormandizer.


Mick

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 08:32 AM

I first heard it at the Bradshaw Folk Club 40 odd years ago sung by the then organiser Denis Sabey, he said it meant rushing your food down while still working.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 07:17 AM

Dave which reference did you see for "eating quickly! please?

I hav in Hudleston's Yorkshire Glossary ~ Gutlin as [horse] always eating at work, closest to your interpretation

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 03:19 PM

Guttle is local dialect for eating quickly.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: MikeL2
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 02:21 PM

hi Keith

Sorry ah thowt you were referring to Lizzie's pinny not t'Gaffer.....all cleared oop nah ??

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 01:08 PM

Yes sorry skinny is used in two ways of course!

now guttle?

Poverty Knock interesting re rent man, as the noise of the loom has been questioned!

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 11:26 AM

I think I first heard it on a 1964 album titled 'introducing the Ian Cambell Folk Group' described as a song from the cotton Mill industry' I believe the 'poverty knock' in question refers to the rent man come calling for his rent

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 10:18 AM

I should have added, " now look at her pinny " ie. it won't fasten due to Lizzie putting on weight due to being pregnant.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 10:16 AM

Skinny = thin,

" She used to be skinny, now look at her pinny "

Skinny = mean, as in ' Gaffer's too skinny to pay '

Dave H

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 06:56 AM

Yes.
I was thinking of "Gaffer's too skinny to pay"

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: MikeL2
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 06:52 AM

hi Keith

<" It is clearly skinny as in skinflint, a mean and ungenerous person.">

I think you are wrong. I think it is a euphemism for Lizzie having been " put up the duff". In other words she is pregnant.

" She used to be skinny nah look at her pinny , I think it's high time she got wed.

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 03:33 AM

I do not agree.
It does not fit the context.
It is clearly skinny as in skinflint, a mean and ungenerous person.

Guttle has been established to mean eat in this context.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 03:25 AM

skinny ~ means was slim build

guttle ~ corruption of guggle or guzzle, which is to drink (beer)!
dictionary written by Ray Padgett of course!

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 08:08 AM

Thread drift, but not too far, re Peter Bellamy's tunes as instanced in Suibhne's post: I once pointed out to him that Susannah's song, "I once lived in service to a lady so fine" in "The Transports", was based closely on "The Fair Maid On The Shore" ~~ a song he insisted he had never heard. But when he asked me to sing him the tune, he agreed he must have heard & forgotten it at some stage and it must have resurfaced as he composed his "lived in service" tune.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 08:02 AM

Mick Haywood who I recorded abd have known donkeys years got Poverty Knock straight from Tommy Daniel, he has extensive notes and photos

Bert Lloyds book may still be available in your library, I have a copy some where from late 1960s

I dare say that the women had some mucky verses too

See yorkshirefolksong.net

Go talk to Mick Haywood please!! or even Wendy Price

ta

ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 04:16 AM

Bellamy's setting of Kipling's The Way Through the Woods uses a tune very similar to Poverty Knock although he only realised this after he'd wrote it...

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 04:15 AM

As I said in March above, and in my phone post earlier today, the old dobbie looms definitely had a "clickety clack" sound to them which can easily be rendered by the phrase "poverty knock".

The old Popplewell Mill at Scholes, Cleckheaton, where my mum and all my aunties worked on the looms from the late 1920s onwards (mum started at 14 in 1930 and was the middle one of 8) used the same looms when it closed in the 60s as it had opened with in Victorian times, and I heard them many times on visits, as my Great Aunt Edith had married into the Priestley family who owned the mill and eventually inherited it when her husband died. Mum said the shop floor when it closed looked exactly as it had when she'd started there!

r.padgett: not sure there is a "correct" version. Tom Daniel almost certainly made up (or re-created) some verses, but there were some verses my mum wouldn't ever sing to me as they were "too mucky".

I said back in March/ April on this thread that I'd try and get as many as possible from her, but she's deteriorated rapidly over the last 3 months and now spends virtually all her time in bed, sleeping. She's not very coherent when she's awake, so no luck I'm afraid. And she's the very last one of her generation, AFAIK from the whole village, not just our family.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 04:02 AM

Sorry, "Guest" above was me from my mobile phone.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 03:47 AM

Poverty knockers was the term used in West Yorkshire for women minding the looms ~ simply

Probably the cacophony of noise in weaving mills is best typified by two knocks

Tom Daniel insisted that "tap tap" be inserted

Tom's lyrics (in A.L.Lloyds Folksongs In England) and on www.yorkshirefolksong.net was in my view a compilation of verses some from the poverty knockers and some from Tom (made up)

I do know Mrs Fawthrop from Pudsey had had some involvement

Correct version is nearer to Mick Haywood

Arrange as needed, you cant break it!

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 02:15 AM

alf gardiner is, i think, wrong in attributing the phrase to door knocking. The old looms that my mum sstarted on in 1930 at popplewell mill were victorian. They were still in use when the mill closed in the 60s and having heard them myself know that pk is a good description of how they sounded.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: pavane
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 01:58 AM

Jone (John) o'Greenfield, containing the phrase, as said, seems to be from early Victorian times, perhaps before 1850.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 26 Jul 10 - 07:22 PM

From The Works of Peter Pindar, Esq., Vol 5 by Peter Pindar (London: J. Walker, 1801), page 412:

WYATT
TO POINS, IN PRAISE OF LIBERTY.

To crawle in courtes is bondage harde!
For who y chooseth chaines I wot?
Yet some, for pleasures of rewarde,
Wi flatter—and blow colde and hot.

But Liberty will I emplore,
Though Poverty knock at my doore.

What be our wants?—some thinges, not all.
Contentment lyeth not in heaps;
Who hath a littel field, though small,
It grete is, if enough he reaps.

Then Liberty will I emplore,
Though Poverty knock at my doore.

[I found many other instances of the expression "poverty is knocking at the door," etc.]

*
From Hiram Greg by J. Crowther Hirst (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1881), page 77:

Among them were large numbers of handloom weavers, who, with a sad, sardonic humour, described the noise made by their looms as "poverty knock, poverty knock"....

*
From Notes and Queries, Series 7, Vol. 4 (London: John C. Francis, 1887), page 328:

"Poverty Knocker."—In Oldham a weaver is sometimes called a "poverty knocker." I am informed that the sound made by the picking-sticks, which send the shuttle from one side of the loom to the other, is construed by weavers into "poverty knock"; hence the phrase. Can any of your Lancashire readers inform me whether the above is correct? J. Butterworth.

*
From ibid, page 396:

"POVERTY KNOCKER" (7th S. iv. 328).—This phrase is well known in the West Riding of Yorkshire, but is not in such general use now as it was forty years since, when hand-loom weaving was still common in the outlying districts around Leeds. The phrase can scarcely be an onomatopoeia, as the simple click of the picking-stick of the hand-loom can only by a most vivid stretch of the imagination form the words "poverty-knock." Here the words were used contemptuously of a hand-loom weaver, whose earnings were much less than those of a power-loom weaver. Most probably the words have a reference to the timid single knock, such as is made by a poor beggar, as distinguished from the more fashionable rat-ta-tat made by a person who "knows manners." I well remember many years since hearing an old hand-loom weaver (who dwelt on a wild moorland road leading into the Slaithwaite valley) say that he could almost tell a poor person from a well-to-do one by the kind of knock he gave at his cottage door when asking the way across the moor on a dark night.

Alf. Gardiner.
(Mr. Herbert Hardy writes to similar effect.)

*
From The Ragged Edge: A Tale of Ward Life & Politics by John Thomas McIntyre (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1902), page 125:

"It's Nelly Fogarty," said someone. "She don't look like a poverty knocker when she's dressed up, eh?"

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: pavane
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 05:17 AM

The term 'Poverty knockers" apprears in a very old broadsheet - was it a common term in the ara?

Jone o' Greenfield's lamentation

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 09 Apr 10 - 02:49 AM

I've known this song since I first started going to folk clubs in the late 1960s and Iv'e never heard a better version than Pete Coe's

Dave H

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 08 Apr 10 - 09:40 PM

Steve,

I can't remember much of what my mum used to sing. Certainly nothing to add to what's already been posted: I did note the "fratchin' wi' t' gaffer" verse is often left out...possibly because unless you're from the north you won't know what "fratching" means, and unless you're from a mill background you won't understand what a string is.

I'll ask her if she can remember some verses next time I see her. She's 94 and "not all there" anymore but she's more likely to remember things from her youth than from last week, so there's a chance I'll get some of it out of her.

Padgett: The mill girls around Cleckheaton, Bailiff Bridge and Brighouse were also known as "Poverty Knockers".

I was born and brought up in Scholes, just outside Cleckheaton and my paternal side lived there for a long time: A report sent to Thomas Cromwell (Henry VIII's minister) by Sir Marmaduke Constable in 1533 lists my ancestor "Thomas Naylor of Scholes" as one of the (many) local cloth-makers found guilty of "flocking" their cloth (using waste or recycled yarn in the weft). So I'm descended from a fraudster!

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: johnadams
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 10:15 AM

I've uploaded Pete Coe's rendering of the song to You Tube, along with seven other songs he performed at Cheltenham Folk Festival in 2006.

Poverty Knock

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Mar 10 - 12:31 PM

Rob,
It would be very helpful to many of us if you can find or remember as much as possible about what was actually sung by anyone other than Tommy himself. Even a few words would be useful. To the majority of us it is just an excellent song rightly well liked and sung, but to a few of us nerds who like to delve into the history and background of such things any further information would be very welcome.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 16 Mar 10 - 06:22 AM

Thanks Rob

Pete Coe asked me about this last Saturday, so it is still of interest ~ Pete Bellamy asked about this too ( along time ago)

Note Mick Haywood says it is Tommy Daniel and Poverty Knocks (with the "s")

Interesting about the clickety clack ~ like a railway noise

LIsten also to the fine song Young Simon John sung by Ruth Price, if you come across 'em probably written by Tom Daniel

I am advised that mill lasses were known as "Poverty Knockers around Huddersfield

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,Rob Naylor
Date: 15 Mar 10 - 11:36 PM

Regarding the origins, Tommy may have re-created it but my mum, a former Cleckheaton mill girl, used to sing a version of it to me in the late 50s, when I was very small, and all my aunts remembered singing it as girls in Popplewell Mill in the early 1930s.

To Austin P: The Lancashire cotton looms may have gone "Thrumedumedum", but Yorkshire woollen looms definitely went "clickety clack". And I learned very early that my mum, all her sisters and other female relatives could lip-read perfectly well over large distances!

The Yarn wetting verse is, I assume, due to them having to wash the excess dye out of the woollen yarn by rinsing it in the mill dam ("tarn"...not a word used locally for the mill dam...but I guess it makes the rhyme work). They'd started to use chemical dyes and some of them weren't very pleasant....the fumes from them could make the weavers feel bad.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 04:43 PM

Everyone connected with Tommy in the 60s is of the opinion he wrote at least most of it himself. There are different versions because Tommy gave the song to different people at different times and sang it slighly different each time. There are at least 2 recordings of him singing it, one by the Hudlestons can be heard at Sheffield University Library, and the other by Tony Green at Leeds University Library. It has been published many times. Neither recording was available to us to be used when we wanted a recording for the YG website so we asked the next best person, Mick Haywood of Batley who learnt it directly from Tommy, as with all of the other TD songs we have on the website.