How about posting a song for a change? Here's a sufficiently traditional one, I hope, and not yet in the DT:

WHAT WILL BECOME OF ENGLAND
(Trad / Tom Brown)

You working men of England one moment pray attend
While I unfold the treatment of the poor upon this land
For now-a-days the factory lords have laid the label low
And daily are contriving plans to prove our overthrow

What will become of England if things go on this way
There's many an honest working man starving here today
They cannot find employment for bread their children crave
And hundreds of those children they're lying in their grave

So arise you sons of freedom the world is upside down
They treat the poor man as a thief in country and in town

Now some have money plenty but still they crave for more
They will not lend a hand to help the starving poor
They'll treat you like a dog and on you cast a frown
That is the way old England the working man casts down

How altered are the times rich men despise the poor
Stand them off without remorse quite scornful at the door
And when a man is out of work his Parish pay is small
Enough to starve himself and wife his children and all

So arise you sons of freedom the world is upside down
They treat the poor man as a thief in country and in town

In former days when Christmas came we had a good fat loaf
We had beef and mutton plenty and we enjoyed them both
But now-a-days such altered ways and different are the times
For if a man should seek relief he's sent to the Whig Bastille

So to conclude and finish these few verses I have made
I hope to see before long men for their labour paid
Then we'll rejoice with heart and voice and banish all our woes
But before we do old England must pay us what she owes

So arise you sons of freedom the world is upside down
They treat the poor man as a thief in country and in town

As sung by Johnny Collins


[1993:] 'Old' Tom Brown [...] a fellow Norfolkman, was a fisherman and farm labourer who learned many of his songs from Sam Larner and Harry Cox - two fine traditional singers also from Norfolk. Before his death I was fortunate to spend many happy sessions with Tom who would, lubricated with a little whisky, regale me for hours with stories, interspersed with songs, of his younger days. It was in one of these sessions that he gave me [this]. (Notes Johnny Collins, 'Pedlar of Songs')

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I transferred this message from another thread.
-Joe Offer-