Thanks Jim for an excellent bit of investigation! So it could be that Cosmotheka turned the words around and really he's a tartar and she's a martyr, which explains why he feels an urge to 'art her but knows there wouldn't be much to gain from it. I would love to get hold of the Gus Elen version and see what he sang. There may be a songsheet somewhere, or maybe these songs of domestic violence never got into print. (Mr Carter envies the man upstairs who comes to blows with his wife so often that "his face looks like a map of Clapham Junction".)

That sort of switching of lyrics (and meaning) can be found in the folk song "Greenland", a whale fishing tale about the whopper that got away and took ten men with it. In the original version the captain was frustrated about the whale but ten times more distressed to lose ten of his men when the boat capsized. In the version by Gillian Frame & Back of the Moon (2001) he is transformed into a mercenary fellow:

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..."We hit that whale and the line paid out
But she gave a flunder with her tail.
The boat capsized and ten men were drowned
And we ne'er did catch that whale, brave boys,
We ne'er did catch that whale.

The losing of those ten brave men
Grieves my heart full sore.
But the losing of that bloody great whale
Grieves me ten times more, brave boys,
Grieves me ten times more."
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Thanks also to The Doctor. I checked out YouTube (surprisingly there are quite a few music hall performances there) and it was Lily Morris singing 'He's only a working man'. The unclear line is "For separation each of them will plead".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OANwX8pFC8A


Once again, Mudcat is the place to go when you need an answer!
- Catriona