BillD: Thanks. I hope it doesn't spoil it for you!

The rest of that verse is about the fact that the weavers were on piece-work, so nobody could *afford* to "heed" anyone who was injured, or to help carry them out. You got hit and you either got yourself "off t' floor" to get the injury seen to, or if knocked out you lay there until you either came to, or there was a shift change or break, or, if you were lucky, a tuner came to help you between jobs.

When my mum was hit on the head, she was lucky. She had 4 sisters working at adjacent looms and Gracie, the youngest, shut down and went to help her. They were all still at home at that time and there was enough coming in that they could afford to lose an hour of one sister's production time.

A scary thing as youngsters was that all my aunts on both sides of the family could lip-read perfectly, from great distances. They had to learn due to the noise, and could hold long, complicated, but silent, conversations. Family "dos" could be quite entertaining, with the older womenfolk chattering away silently to each other without the men or we kids having a clue what they were saying! The downside was that if we swore in the street, for instance, even 20 yards away from the window, they might "hear" and give us a clip round the ear when we got in.