Origins: Poverty Knock

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,Ebor_Fiddler
Date: 29 Sep 12 - 12:55 PM

I only remember the chorus, and that in my innocence, #I had to have the phrase "Knocking shop" explained to me. The tune is Poverty Knock.

"Eighteenpence on the bed,
Pleasure for single or wed.
There's none so many
as pretty young Jenny
For eighteenpence on the bed."

Pure and uncorrupted, twelve to the shilling pence of course.

Sorry I can't be of more help. Did Tommy not do some self-publishing or something? Has my brain totally slipped its cogs?

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Sep 12 - 10:43 AM

We've got copies of Tommy's little booklet but it only contains the usual 5 songs and very little in the way of provenance.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 30 Sep 12 - 02:22 PM

Does EFDDS have any songs Steve?

I had that that copy of Long Tom also, need atune

What about the Cock and The Ass? was that Tommy's (dunt google it anyone! lol)

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 30 Sep 12 - 03:22 PM

The Cock and the Ass sounds familiar. Is it the same as The Old Woman and her Ass? Don't know if EFDSS have any of Tommy's stuff but I'll be there next week and I could ask.

I presume we need that extra verse of PK for the YG website. Do you want me to add it in? If so I'll need to include your proper name Ebor Fiddler. If you don't want folk to know you can pm me.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 01 Oct 12 - 04:31 AM

Yes I sing the Cock and The Ass, and Mike Harding had a similar song, I don't know about his provenance, but assumed that he had infact embroided the original TD song (dunt know really)

There was an old woman a likely old lass who wandered round batley with a cart and a ass, every day her living to mek, this old woman mucky washing did tek with me fal de rol lol, fal di rol lol, fol di rol fol de rol fol de rol day

There was an old man whose knees they did knock, altho a small man he'd a large Red Rhode Island cock etc~~~~~~

lol
Ray
Yes please re EFDSS ta!

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 02 Oct 12 - 04:30 AM

r.padgett: Poverty Knock interesting re rent man, as the noise of the loom has been questioned!

Never heard anything about the rent man, and ALL my female relatives of my mother's generation, both sides of the family, were "Poverty Knockers", some for a short time, most for all of their working lives.

As I said above a couple of years ago, the old-model Yorkshire *woollen* mill looms (as opposed to Lancastrian cotton looms)definitely made a sound that could be rendered as "poverty knock". I've heard them! My relatives always said that that's why they were called Poverty Knockers.

And the clincher is that Yorkshire people, particularly in the West Riding, however hard they struggled, would never admit to being in "poverty"...it's one thing to refer in humour to the sound a loom makes, another entirely to personalise the poverty to the knock of a rent man. My eldest aunt was denied the chance of a grammar school education, even though she passed the exams, because my grandparents would have had to get financial help to be able to buy the uniform. Such help *was* available, but there was NO WAY they'd ever consider asking for "charity". If they couldn't pay their way they went without. And that went for the whole village. So my auntie Nora went into t' mill rather than doing what she's always dreamed of and becoming a teacher.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Sugwash
Date: 02 Oct 12 - 04:48 AM

I learnt the Cock and the Ass from Mick Haywood, I believe Mike Harding got it from the same source.

I've always thought it was Irish in origin, but when I sang it in a pub in Culfin it was met with total stunned silence that only needed some tumble weed to complete the scene.

Andy Sugden

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: r.padgett
Date: 02 Oct 12 - 04:56 AM

Thanks Rob and Andy for clarification and confirmation re "Knocks" and cock and ass song

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,kathy
Date: 05 Jan 17 - 06:39 AM

I have had doubts cast on the validity of the verse where the yarn is dipped in the "tarn". Is it part of the original song, or a verse that was added later?

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 05 Jan 17 - 09:17 AM

Might never know about that Kathy ~ probably made up by the mill girls or even Tommy

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: leeneia
Date: 05 Jan 17 - 11:55 AM

I had to laugh at this in the second post. "the book Victoria's Inferno."

It's a clear example of a common cliche - put in a woman and make it her fault.

Queen Victoria didn't have any mills.   Mills were owned, operated and supervised by men. Victoria and her husband, Albert, felt more concern for the poor of the nation than did the men who were on the scene, exploiting them.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 05 Jan 17 - 07:15 PM

Chumbawamba on YOUTUBE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7syQl-2l1Y

mainly Norfolk:
https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/povertyknock.html

Thomas.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 06 Jan 17 - 05:01 AM

I recorded Poverty knocks from Mick Haywood in 2006 for the yorkshire garland song db ~ sung by Mick Haywood who was a good friend of Tom Daniel~ I note that the notes by Steve Gardham show this as traditional ~ relevant comments mainly above

The mainly norfolk is a good supplement for the provenance ~ Pete Coe's instrumental accompaniment is really a lament ~ surely the mill girls would have hit this song much harder, more of a protest and the traditional knock knock would be and should be loud as Tommy himself would have done! ~ Pete has lost the regional dialect ~ which obviously grates with me (West Yorkshire)

check yorkshire folk song/Yorkshire Garland ~ note Mick Haywood and Wendy Price still alive in Whitby, first hand authorities on Tom Daniel

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 15 May 17 - 08:45 PM

We are presenting a workshop at the San Francisco Free Folk Festival on June 10. We have done this workshop many times but it has been a while so we were refreshing what's left of our brains on the subject of the textile industry in England where all this started.

We came across a passage in a pamphlet entitled, "Looms and Weaving" by Anna Benson and Neil Warburton, published in 1986 which says, "The most unpopular aspect of woollen handloom weaving was wetting weft cops to facilitate close packing of the weft threads. Cops of yarn were immersed in cold water and the weaver sucked water through them with a wooden tube. "

This may explain the mysterious verse in "Poverty Knock" that says:

We've got to wet our own yarn,
By dippin' it into the tarn
It's wet an' soggy and makes us feel groggy,
and there's mice in that dirty old barn.

A cop, or pirn, was a long, narrow bobbin which held the weft thread. It fit inside the shuttle which carried it across the warp threads, the action being called a "pick". After each pick, the last weft thread was packed, or "beaten up", against the previous weft threads by a comb-like device. Apparently, when wool (or at least certain kinds of wool) was being used, proper packing could only be achieved when the yarn or thread was wet. Since the yarn was already wound onto the cop, the whole thing had to be dipped into the "tarn" which we infer was some kind of vessel that held the water. Then, in order to wet the yarn all the way through, a wooden tube was attached to the center hole of the cop while blocking up the other end somehow. Then, when one sucked on the tube, a partial vacuum was created inside the cop which drew in the water all the way to the center of the winding. Continuous sucking on the tube could easily have made one dizzy or, as the song says, groggy.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 15 May 17 - 08:51 PM

A little more:

We have a pirn or cop in our possession and we just looked at it. It is closed at one end. The other end is open so it can slide down over a rod attached to the shuttle.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 16 May 17 - 04:04 AM

Interesting as I always that "tarn" was a body of water like a lake or mill type reservoir ~ but this certainly puts a different slant on the verse

Ray

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: Senoufou
Date: 16 May 17 - 04:22 AM

(Totally irrelevant)
My Irish mother used to call hiccups 'Hunger Knock'.

Subject: RE: Origins: Poverty Knock
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 16 May 17 - 04:32 AM

"cop
A yarn package spun on a mule or ring spindle. A paper, cardboard, wooden, plastic or metal tube is used as the core of the package."

from weaving terminology

Not an expert on weaving btw!!

Ray