Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner

Subject: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 31 May 02 - 10:39 AM

Maybe a silly question ... when I first heard this song in the late sixties, I assumed that 'duds' (They'll take your duds and tools as well) meant 'clothes'. Recently I've begun to wonder:the guy would be wearing his clothes, so they wouldn't need 'hoying doon the pit o' Hell' separately. What does it mean, then? I asked our resident Geordie, and he always thought it meant 'clothes' too. Maybe it does--anyone know?

Steve

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 31 May 02 - 10:48 AM

I also think it meant they stripped them of their clothes and took their tools, but the other possibility is 'duds' for 'pipes', tobacco pipes were called 'duds' in Ireland, which I know this song doesn't refer to, but to be without ones tools and ones pipe would be an awful thing, no? Does anyone know of the use of the term elsewhere?

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: DMcG
Date: 31 May 02 - 10:48 AM

I'd vote for clothes as well. I lived in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne for six years and the North East UK for another 18, and often heard 'duds' used for clothes (trousers in particular) and never heard used for anything else.

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: IanC
Date: 31 May 02 - 10:54 AM

Definitely clothes ... but may well mean Working Clothes in this context.

:-)
Ian

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 31 May 02 - 10:56 AM

OED says it most commonly has been used as slang for clothes, but also has meant 'working man's tools' or 'things' in general, one could have 'duds in one's pockets', trifles, useless things, or small things of some use, small tools perhaps, but in context since tools are already mentioned, it most likely means clothes

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: Gareth
Date: 31 May 02 - 03:05 PM

Errr Duds may equal pipes and tobbacco, but smoking underground ??. Unless "Blacklegs" were encouraged to smoke underground.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: GUEST,Les B.
Date: 31 May 02 - 03:49 PM

I don't know about the mines in those times, but in more modern times some of the mines I've been around had "change houses" (which sometimes also had showers) for the miners to get into and out of their underground work clothes, boots, hard hats, etc.

When I first heard this song about 25 years ago, I assumed it meant the strikers were getting rid of all the blacklegs' tools and the clothing they wore while using those tools - effecting their ability to work.

I suppose a more severe interpretation, as mentioned above, could be that they stripped them naked as a warning ?!?

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: The Walrus
Date: 31 May 02 - 06:27 PM

It is worth remembering that, in times past, many miners worked nearly naked anyway, so it is feasable that the blackleg's clothes might well have ben stolen and dumped or, as has been already mentioned, they might simply have been stripped (and probably beaten) and sent away naked amidst the jeers of the strikers and their families & supporters (if they didn't meet the same fate as their kit).

Walrus

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: Gareth
Date: 31 May 02 - 06:41 PM

Mmmmmh ! Striped Naked ? Well Tarring and Feathering was not unkown.

Slight thread drift, but on the same theme. Picture the little village of Cwmfelinfach, in the Sirhowy Valley, in the hinterland between Cardiff and Newport. The local Colliery was the infamous 'Nine Mile Point' It was there in the mid 1930's that the South Wales Miners Federation, made a stand over recognition between the "Fed", and the company Union that had been recognised post 1926 (UK Catters will recognise that date. Non Brits PM Me)

A dispute was engineered, by the 'Fed'. Without going into to much detail it was bloody, even by South Wales standards, though possibly not by Harlen County Standards (Bloody Harlen USA).- Nine Mile Point was where they invented the stay down strike.

Blacklegs suffered civic death. If a blackleg , or his familly, entered a shop, the shop closed rather than serve them, if a 'leg got on a bus, the bus stopped.

It got violent, tarring and feathering happened, and a number of the lads were convicted and went to jail.

And the company Union was broken in the Sirhowey Valley.

What happened pst 1983/4 is another story.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: GUEST,Dagenham Doc
Date: 31 May 02 - 08:14 PM

When I was a young man growing up in the east end of London, if we were going out for the night we always talked about 'putting on our best Duds'

Doc

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: bill\sables
Date: 01 Jun 02 - 03:32 AM

Miners in North East England worked the coal face wearing only old breeches, boots and fibre helmat, the work was hot and sweaty and there was usually much water so pants were cut off just below the knee so as not to cause extra weight when wet. These breeches were called "duds". the flat cap was called "dut". So if the blackleg miner had his tools and breeches stolen and thrown down the pit it was a sort of symbolism that it should be him who was thrown down.
Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: Fiolar
Date: 01 Jun 02 - 09:27 AM

Sorry folks "duds" does not mean a pipe in Ireland. The correct word for that is "duidin" pronounced "doo-deen." Recall the song "The Rocks of Bawn" in which it states in one part: "My curse upon you Sweeney Boy,
You have me driven mad;
A-sitting by the fireside,
With your duidin in your gob."
According to the Dictionary of Archaic Words" by James Orchard Halliwell first published in 1850 "duds" was a dialect word meaning "dirty clothes" and in the "Cassell Dictionary of Slang" its meaning is given as (1) clothing (mid 15th century) and (2) one's possessions, one's things in general (mid 17th century).

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: A Wandering Minstrel
Date: 01 Jun 02 - 12:42 PM

Bill,

If I recall correctly a 'Dut' is a bowler hat (as worn by formen and uppity types) a flat cap was and still is called a "bonnet"

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 05 Jun 02 - 03:27 AM

Lots of senesible answers to my "silly" question--thanks! Looks like "working clothes" has most support; the reason I wasn't entirely convinced is that "pants" are mentioned specifically in the first verse.

My great-grandfather used to walk five miles or so from Blakenall (S. Staffs) to the Wyrley [rhymes with "early"] Grove pit every day in the early years of the century. In those days you'd come back dirty and wash at home; even if you stripped before working, your clothes would get dirty on the inside when you put them back on. Granddad would tell me how his father would often be sent back half-way through the week with just a couple of shillings (10p) to feed the family (abut half-a-dozen kids, I think; though I keep discovering more great aunts & uncles). He never mentioned blacklegs: maybe there weren't any in those parts at the time?

Thanks again, folks!
Steve

Subject: RE: Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner
From: John J
Date: 05 Jun 02 - 05:21 AM

I always thought it meant trousers.

John