Nick Dow wrote: Robert if you do not want to get caught up in the above post, I would be interested in your views if any, on Lloyds musical pigeon hole that he christened the 'industrial tradition' With reference to the ballad index, have you found any so called industrial folk songs with a creditable provenance to separate them from the broad mass of Folksong?

A genuinely interesting question. There are certainly songs about factory work. Things like "No More Shall I Work in the Factory" or "Hard Times in the Mill." There are songs directly opposed to factory work, often but not always connected to the labor movement. There are the occasional humorous songs about industry ("Cosher Bailey's Engine"). There are lots of songs about industrial disasters of one sort or another ("The Burning of the Granite Mill" [Laws G13], plus many mine songs). There are factory murders ("Mary Phagan" [Laws F20]).

But I can't think, off the top of my head, of a single song that has gone into tradition that was used to help perform the work in factories, and some complicated searches failed to turn anything up. There are lots of songs that seem to be by workers, but none that they used in their work.

On the other hand, consider the work of Ella May Wiggins (the correct spelling), such as "The Mill Mother's Lament." Like (say) Joe Hill, she wrote her songs to use tunes that the mill workers knew. "The Mill Mother's Lament" is based on "Mary Phagan"; "Chief Aderholt" on "Floyd Collins" -- not hymn tunes, note. That hints that some of these songs would have been known in Gastonia, where the people had little in common except slogging together to their endless hours in the mill.

Those are just my first thoughts. If I think of something else, I'll post it.