English Spinning Songs

Subject: English Spinning Songs
From: GUEST,Claire
Date: 10 Sep 24 - 10:20 AM

Hello

Has anyone come across any English spinning songs?

Many thanks for your help

Claire

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Sep 24 - 02:38 PM

poverty knock is bout weaving

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 11 Sep 24 - 09:37 AM

Any preference? Spinning wool or cotton?

Using a spinning wheel or spinning cotton in a mill?

Should be lots of songs about life in cotton mills - both spinning and weaving.

Little Piecer Dave Brooks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUwwYOjP_44
Little Piecer
Piecer - (child) worker in a spinning mill to piece together any threads which broke.

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: Howard Kaplan
Date: 11 Sep 24 - 10:44 PM

Keith Marsden's song "Willy-'ole lad" (Mudcat thread) includes the line "I started off low but I'm head spinner now". That is, of course, industrial scale spinning, not sit-by-the-hearth spinning.

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 12 Sep 24 - 04:10 AM

"Wind the bobbin up".
"The doffing mistress" is supposed to be of Northern Irish origin but well known from Lancashire as well.
Rene, down in Taunton, used to sing a song about a woman sitting by a spinning wheel but I cannot remember anything else about it.

Robin

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Sep 24 - 04:50 AM

the spinning wheel is an irish song in the English language

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: GUEST,Claire
Date: 12 Sep 24 - 05:56 AM

Thanks guys, so helpful already! I was predominately thinking of cottage industry spinning - by the hearth - I have been looking at lovely Shetland ones and I know there are Irish and Manx ones. I wondered if we the English had similar ones - my findings haven't turned up much. However, large-scale spinning songs are also of great interest!

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 12 Sep 24 - 03:46 PM

https://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/song-midis/Tarry_Wool.htm

Tarry Wool

Tarry wool, oh tarry wool
Tarry wool is ill tae spin
Card it well, oh, card it well
Card it well e'er ye begin

When it's carded, wove and spun,
Then your work is almost done
But when it's woven, dressed and cleaned,
It will be clothing for a queen

Note: Herd 1776, II.100 (with 4 more stanzas). With music in SMM I (1787)


https://carolinedavison.substack.com/p/vaughan-williamss-journey-into-folk-f9f

Vaughan Williams’s Journey into Folk: 10 August 1904 ‘Tarry Woo’’. John Mason, Dent, Yorkshire

Vaughan Williams used this tune in the English Hymnal [see also 25 December 1903 and 23 July 1904] renamed ‘Dent Dale’ after the area in which he collected it;
it was matched with the words of ‘Hark! How all the welkin rings’, also known as ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’.

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: Helen
Date: 12 Sep 24 - 04:15 PM

When I was at school we used a music book called Sing Care Away and one of the songs in it was The little Spinner. The music was composed by Mozart, German title: Die kleine Spinnerin. The English lyrics were by J. Troutbeck.

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: Helen
Date: 12 Sep 24 - 04:25 PM

I can't find the English lyrics online for The Little Spinner but I still have the book. It is only three verses so I can post them here if you are interested.

Also, Sing Care Away, Book 1 is available to buy online on various sites.

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 12 Sep 24 - 06:00 PM

There is another song to go with Tarry Wool from Dent; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQCdS9yK35A The Terrible Knitters of Dent

https://www.farfieldmill.org/mills-around-sedbergh/ The ‘terrible knitters e Dent’ became famous all over Britain after Robert Southey described them in a story published in 1834. By ‘terrible’ he meant ‘terribly good’. The story, a true one, tells the tale of two young girls, Betty and Sally Yewdale, who were sent to Dent in the 1760s, to learn how to knit. They hated it because they were forced to knit as fast as they could, all day long, Eventually they ran away one snowy night and walked the long miles home to Langdale via Kendal. The knitters of Dent and Sedbergh used thick, greasy yarn called ‘bump’ as well as finer wool for special items like patterned gloves. They made hats and caps; mittens and socks and even waistcoats and jackets, which were called ‘frocks’.

https://awoollyyarn.blogspot.com/2017/08/yorkshire-day-special-terrible-knitters.html The village of Dent made a name for itself for producing high-quality hand-knitted stockings, jerseys, caps and gloves, knitted from local fleece. They used very thin needles for intricate lace and Fair Isle garments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_tethera Counting systems were traditionally used for sheep counting and counting stitches in knitting until the Industrial Revolution, especially in the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales. This was the particular one from Wensleydale;

1 Yain 2 Tain 3 Eddero 4 Peddero 5 Pitts 6 Tayter 7 Later 8 Overro 9 Coverro 10 Disc
11 Yain disc 12 Tain disc 13 Edderro disc 14 Peddero disc 15 Bumfitt 16 Bumfitt yain 17 Bumfitt tain 18 Bumfitt edderro 19 Bumfitt peddero 20 Jiggit

After Jiggitt, the shepherd would make a nick on a stick, or put a stone in a pocket.

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 13 Sep 24 - 09:15 AM

> By ‘terrible’ he meant ‘terribly good’.

An old and cobwebbed memory: In Assembly in primary school, the head teacher said how someone had once described the British Museum as "that awe-full place", meaning that it, or its contents, inspired awe. She then said that describing it as "that awful place" would nowadays be unwise.

If this comment is misplaced, please move it to one of the Abuse of English threads.

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 24 - 12:44 PM

The Spinning Wheel....old Irish song.

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 13 Sep 24 - 12:49 PM

Sorry, the last post by Guest was me. Here's another old Irish 'Spinning wheel' song which I sung many years ago https://youtu.be/7DsIUdgpetU?si=hwt6h7gYhyh_tFHz

Subject: RE: English Spinning Songs
From: Long Firm Freddie
Date: 13 Sep 24 - 05:34 PM

Here's a song about an English spinner, Graham Swann:

Swann Song

LFF