Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?

Subject: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,BlackAcornUK
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 12:55 PM

Hello all - next weekend's installment of the monthly Manchester 'rad trad' singaround is in partnership with Manchester Tenant's Union, and will focus on:


'...Tenants Union, Rent Strike, and Land Justice songs'


Does anyone have suggestions of songs that fit this solidaristic bill?


This might include ballads, broadsides and worker/industrial songs of poor landlords; eviction and enclosure; defiance and collective organisation in the face of greed, threat and displacement.


Perhaps it might also encompass songs fighting for field, fell, farm and forest - as well as housing - justice.


Many thanks in advance!

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,BlackAcornUK
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 01:00 PM

Here are the details of the event itself:


'...Hello @everyone, our next event is in the books! Come join us at the Grafton Arms (next to MRI) on Saturday the 9th of March @ 3:30 for an afternoon of Tenants Union, Rent Strike, and Land Justice songs. We are joined by Greater Manchester Tenants Union following their All Members Meeting starting Midday at Brunswick Church. Bring acoustic instruments if you have them, and we hope to see you down there!'


https://m.facebook.com/events/368462912741156/?ref=newsfeed

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 02:10 PM

The obvious place to start for something like this is Irish "Land League" songs. There are quite a few of these. Among the most popular:

The Blackbird of Avondale/The Arrest of Parnell (Roud #5174)

The Bold Tenant Farmer (Roud #5164; this should be easy to find, because the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded it)

Farmer Michael Hayes/The General Fox Chase (Roud #5226)

Lord Waterford (Roud #6529) is sung to "The Shan Van VOght

The Moneygran Pig Hunt (Roud #13345. Not as popular as the preceding, but with a bit more humor)

The DT version Tommy Armstrong's "Durham Strike/Durham Lockout" (referring to an event of 1892) is supposed to be sung to "Tramps and Hawkers"/"Paddy West," so everyone could easily join in

That's at least something to start with.

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GerryM
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 03:24 PM

The Siege of Union Street, by Alistair Hulett. I couldn't find a good quality recording by Alistair online, but here's a good recording by Dan Kelly: https://youtu.be/GjAIGNA-2XM?si=lf2YabQKHrukG9QH

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 03:59 PM

One from the colonials: Old Man Trump

Unpublished but, it'll do fine for protest art. New York history, maybe not so much.

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 04:10 PM

The Mudcat song page got lost somewhere in the shuffle: Lyr Req: Old Man Trump (Woody Guthrie)

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,IS
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 05:09 PM

The Digger's Song from Leon Rosselson could be good.

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,IS
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 05:12 PM

And a second mention for Alistair Hullett on this thread, for "Mrs Barbour's Army."

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GerryM
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 08:30 PM

Here's a recording of Alistair Hulett in concert, singing Mrs Barbour's Army: https://youtu.be/1REUYD01Nr0?si=BxTTUDSyPO1iNGjz

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Mar 24 - 03:31 AM

The World Turned Upside Down aka The Digger's Song from Leon Rosselson

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 04 Mar 24 - 04:08 AM

The Seven Men of Knoydart fts the bill.

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 04 Mar 24 - 09:52 AM

Songs for Swinging Landlords To
Stan Kelly, Leon Rosselson:
Side 1
Greedy Landlord
Oakey Evictions (Roud V35760)
Side 2
The Man That Waters the Workers’ Beer
Pity the Downtrodden Landlord

Track 1 words Fred Dallas, tune trad. (Rare Turpin Hero);
Track 2 Tommy Armstrong;
Track 3 words Paddy Ryan, tune trad.;
Track 4 words B. Woolf, music Arnold Clayton
Topic Records TOP60 (7" EP, UK, 1961)
https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/records/stankelly.html

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 04 Mar 24 - 11:16 AM

Check the Housing Songs
mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=31006

& more
www.google.com/search?q=%22Housing+Songbook%22+site:mudcat.org

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,BlackAcornUK
Date: 04 Mar 24 - 01:28 PM

Fabulous stuff, many thanks all!!

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,Felipa
Date: 04 Mar 24 - 10:29 PM

https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=168388 Òran Beinn Lì
song in Scottish Gaelic. The Mudcat thread includes partial translation and information, in English, of the background of the song.

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 05 Mar 24 - 10:44 AM

Old Skibbereen

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: JohnBaxter
Date: 07 Mar 24 - 11:12 AM

In the general election of 1885 and 86 land reform was a big issue. Radical Liberals campaigned around the slogan "3 Acres and a Cow" - referring to proposed compulsory purchase powers to buy land for the creation of small holdings for every worker.

The song most often sung today is Three acres and a cow sung to the tune of Music Hall standard, I wish they’d do it now. Roy Palmer published it in the excellent The Painful Plough.
https://folksongandmusichall.com/index.php/three-acres-and-a-cow/

I'm afraid I'll be away this weekend, otherwise I'd like to have been there ..

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Charmion
Date: 07 Mar 24 - 11:21 AM

Do you know "Bad Housing Blues"?

Here's an early 1950s recording by Josh White:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZGuaHQPfyA

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 07 Mar 24 - 12:04 PM

JohnBaxter wrote: In the general election of 1885 and 86 land reform was a big issue.

If you want material about that, you might look at the various Farmer's Alliance songs, in particular the songs of Luna Kellie (most of which were poems set to familiar tunes, e.g.). Here are some of the more accessible ones:
1. Dear Prairie Home (Darling Nellie Gray)
2. Marching for Freedom (Marching Through Georgia)
3. The Donkey's Song (When Johnny Comes Marching Home)
4. The Independent Broom (The Star-Spangled Banner)
5. The Pauper's Cowhides (Year of Jubilo)
6. A Song of the Times (John Brown's Body)
7. Vote For Me (Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now)
8. Who Has Managed (Twenty Years Ago)

Often these are in support of the Populist Party or its various branches. Sources for the songs:

Cohen, American Folk Songs, A Regional Encyclopedia, volume 2: #1
Welsch, Nebraska Pioneer Lore: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #8
Lingenfelter, Dyer, and Cohen, Songs of the American West: #1, #7
Nebraska Folklore, Pamphlet Eighteen, "Farmers' Alliance Songs of the 1890's," Federal Writers' Project, 1938 (Google the title!): #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8. This has some other songs not by Kellie, the only one of which is at all common is "A Hayseed Like Me."

There is also a sort of biography/autobiography of Kellie, "A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie," edited by Jane Taylor Nelson.

All of this led ultimately into the insanity of Free Silver, for which see, e.g.

"Free Silver" (possibly by James W. Day/Jilson Setters)
"Wait for the Wagon" (Free Silver version)
"Bye, Old Grover"

And, for the absolute total jerk who converted the relatively gentle, left-wing Populism into Trumpian Nativism (and who also was the single biggest figure in getting Leo Frank lynched),

"Thomas E. Watson" (by Andrew Jenkins)

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 07 Mar 24 - 12:06 PM

Correction to my own post that begins JohnBaxter wrote: In the general election of 1885 and 86 land reform was a big issue.

He's talking about British land reform, as I should have pointed out had I not been carried away, but the American Populist Party had some of the same issues in the same period. My post related to that.

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 10 Mar 24 - 02:05 PM

BlackAcornUK

What else got sung?

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 10 Mar 24 - 02:45 PM

Various songs about the Highland Clearances:
Jim McLean's "Smile in Your Sleep"
Ivan Drever's "Braes of Sutherland"
(And John MacKenzie beat me to it on the Hamish Henderson song "Seven Men of Moidart")

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 10 Mar 24 - 03:12 PM

The Jeely Piece Song by Adam McNaughtan

I'm a skyscraper wean
I live on the nineteenth flair
But I'm no gaun' oot to play ony mair
Since we moved to Castlemilk
I'm wasting away
Cos I'm gettin'one less meal every day

Oh ye cannae fling pieces oot a twenty-story flat
Seven hundred hungry weans will testify tae that
If it's butter, cheese or jeely
If the breid is plain or pan
The chances of it reaching earth are ninety nine tae wan

The Yellow on the Broom by Adam McNaughtan

Betsy Whyte’s book about her childhood, Yellow on the Broom, inspired me to write this song with the same title. Betsy’s mother, accustomed to travelling all the year round, married a man who wintered in town. She disliked the life among scaldies (hostile townsfolk) who would sconce (mock) her children, and she longed each spring to see the bloom on the broom, the sign that it was time for the ganaboot folk to be on the road. Now read the book! (The tune is The Female Drummer as sung by Harry Cox.)

I ken ye dinnae like it, lass, tae winter here in toon
For the scaldies ay miscry us and they try to bring us doon
And it’s hard to raise three bairns in a single flea-box room
But I’ll tak’ ye on the road again when yellow’s on the broom

Chorus:
When the yellow’s on the broom, when the yellow’s on the broom
I’ll tak’ ye on the road again when yellow’s on the broom

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GerryM
Date: 10 Mar 24 - 04:31 PM

Highland clearances? Alistair Hulett's your man: The Destitution Road. https://youtu.be/P0eHshQxiZQ?si=6NOsHCA_T67XNsuX

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 10 Mar 24 - 04:53 PM

Where the Hell are We Going to Live? (Paul Wright)

Paul Wright was born and lived in Walthamstow, where he worked for a time as a reporter on the Waltham Forest Guardian newspaper. He wrote 'Where The Hell Are We Going To Live?' at a time when so-called slum terraces were being pulled down and replaced by horrible tower blocks.

Well the May that I was married
We tried to settle down
And all we need's half a million quid
for to buy a two up and two down
We were on the council waiting list
number six thousand and five
We're due for a house in 2001
that's assuming we're both still alive.

Where the hell are we gonna live
where the hell are we gonna live?
Some miserable mansion up in the sky
walking around in a block a mile high,
Tellin' my friends that I'd much rather die
where the hell are we gonna live?

Sung by Vin Garbutt and The Levellers

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 10 Mar 24 - 06:17 PM

Knocking Down Our Home by Badfinger from Magic Christian Music

Your heart is in your home they say Your home's where you belong
But someone stole my heart today So listen to my song

I heard the news today They're going to move us far away
Seems that our home must go They're going to build a motorway

It isn't fair, nobody cares They're knocking down our home
Ruining all we own They're knocking down our home
Please help us Don't let them take our home

Ma's cooking at the stove Where she's cooked for thirty years
Ten thousand meals she's cooked But now her eyes are filled with tears

It isn't fair, nobody cares They're knocking down our home
Ruining all we own

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Felipa
Date: 10 Mar 24 - 07:30 PM

Òran Beinn Lì is a Scottish Gaelic song celebrating an ultimately successful struggle for crofters rights in the Isle of Skye. A little background information and a translation are included in the linked Mudcat discussion thread.

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 10 Mar 24 - 08:31 PM

More from Adam McNaughtan:
Where is the Glasgow that I used tae know?
They’re pulling doon the building next tae oors

And from John McCreadie:
Doomsday in the Afternoon

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 11 Mar 24 - 11:42 AM

Three Acres And A Cow has a resources page with links to
songs
(1100s) Robin Hood ballads as sung by Wallace House
(1300s) The Cutty Wren
(1381*) John Ball by Sydney Carter
(1400s) The Bitter Withy
(1550) Of Rente Raysers by Robert Crowley
(1607) The Poor Mans Joye & the Gentlemen’s Plague
(1611) The Fowlers’ Complaint
(1630) A Lanthorne for Landlords
(1649) The Diggers’ Song
(1649*) The World Turned Upside Down by Leon Rosselson
(1692*) The Massacre of Glencoe by Jim Mclean
(1707*) Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation by Robert Burns
(1769) The Death of Bill Brown
(1778) The Cottager’s Complaint
(1780) Die Gedanken Sind Frei
(1790*) Smile In Your Sleep by Jim McLean
(1809) Petition of the Pigs in Kent
(1814*) Dùthaich Mhic Aoidh by Ewan Robertson
(1830) Eight shillings a week
(1830) Owslebury lads
(1834*) Tolpuddle Man by Graham Moore
(1840) Song On The Times
(1846) The Blackstone-Edge Song by Ernest Jones
(1849) Chartists poems and songs
(1851*) The Ballad Of Crowfoot by Willie Dunn
(1866) Ballad of Berkhamsted Common
(1872) My master and I
(1882*) Land Corporation of Ireland song by Duncan Bourne
(1884) The Foresters’ Egg! A Timely Warning!
(1885) other ‘Three Acres And A Cow’ themed ballads
(1885) Three Acres And A Cow
(1887) The Land Song
(1915*) Mrs Barbours’ Army by Alistair Hulett
(1932) Manchester Rambler by Ewan MacColl
(1948) Ballad of the Men of Knoydart by Hamish Henderson
(1960) Freedom Come All Ye by Hamish Henderson
(1960) Hey Ho, Cook and Rowe by Peggy Seeger
(1976*) From Little Things Big Things Grow by Paul Kelly
(1985) The Battle of the Beanfield by The Levellers
(1987) Beds Are Burning by Midnight Oil
(1999) A Place Called England by Maggie Holland
(2015) The Ballad of Hawkwood by Robin Grey
(2017) Let’s Lock Ourselves Here For A While
(2017) The Ballad Of The Green Backyard
(2019) Sing ORFC
Baa baa black sheep

poems
(1381) John Ball’s Speech before the Peasant’s Revolt by Michael Rosen
(1550) Of Rente Raysers by Robert Crowley
(1770) The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith
(1819) The Mask Of Anarchy by Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1820) The Mores by John Clare
(1840) Men of England by Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1844) The Leane by William Barnes
(1849) Chartists poems and songs
(1860s) Poetry of the Lancashire Cotton Famine
(1884) The Foresters’ Egg! A Timely Warning!
Spiorad a’ Charthannais (The Spirit of Kindliness), by the Lewis poet Iain Mac a’ Ghobhainn (John Smith)
The Island by Francis Brett Young   

https://threeacresandacow.co.uk/resources/

+ pages for tv, books, podcasts etc

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 11 Mar 24 - 11:59 AM

'Moving Day'- Charlie Polle or as adapted by Bob Davenport

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 11 Mar 24 - 12:09 PM

FreddyHeady wrote: Three Acres And A Cow has a resources page with links to
songs
(1100s) Robin Hood ballads as sung by Wallace House

If this is their level of scholarship, I strongly suggest avoiding it.

Robin Hood demonstrably did not live in the 1100s, because he uses a longbow. Longbows did not exist in that era.

"Rymes of Robin Hood" are mentioned in Piers Plowman. That's c. 1380.

The earliest actual texts of Robin Hood romances are "Robin Hood and the Monk" and "Robin Hood and the Potter," in manuscripts of the mid-1400s. There is no evidence that they were sung.

Two other Robin Hood pieces are known to have been in existence by c. 1500. They are the "Gest" and "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne." There is no evidence that either one was sung.

(To be clear: I suspect that some of them were sung. But we can't prove it. Certainly we have no tunes.)

To be sure, there are Robin Hood ballads that are known to have been sung -- a few of them. Less than half the Robin Hood Child ballads have tunes, according to Bronson, and they are almost all clearly late texts. (There are a few that might be from Robin's middle period: Robin Hood's Death, The Jolly Pindar of Wakefield, Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar, Robin Hood and the Bishop of Hereford. The rest are from the era of the garlands, and are secondary.)

Bottom line: There is no evidence that Robin Hood tales existed before the fourteenth century (though the name is mentioned once or twice), and strong reason to doubt that they could have existed before the thirteenth.

Neither "The Cutty Wren" nor "The Bitter Withy" shows any hint of being as old as the date cited, but I'm sure this is enough fury at lousy scholarship. :-)

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 11 Mar 24 - 01:12 PM

Since I'm talking about Robin Hood anyway, perhaps I should throw in some other date pegs.

The "Gest of Robyn Hode" is the earliest extant Robin Hood romance to contain the motif of The King and the Subject, in which Robin is reconciled with the King.

The king is named "Edward." This is unequivocal. We read about "Edward our comely king" in stanza 353, and "Edward, our king" in stanzas 384 and 450. All these readings are unequivocal; the witnesses to these lines all read "Edward." (Admittedly there is really only one witness to the texts of these stanzas, Wynken de Worde's print; all the others are descended from it.)

There were several pre-Conquest Kings Edward, but no pre-conquest outlaw would be named Robin. So we must look to the post-conquest Edwards: Edward I (reigned 1272-1307), Edward II (1307-1327), Edward III (1327-1377), Edward IV (1461-1470 and 1471-1483).

Once again we get an earliest possible date in the thirteenth century.

There is one other dating hint of significance: In stanza 91, the abbot swears "By God and Saint Richard" (spelled "Rycharde" in the print). No scholar has ever found a "Saint Richard." I have solved this: Saint Richard is Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, executed 1405 by Henry IV. Scrope was never canonized, because Henry made sure he was never canonized, but the people of northern England attributed miracles to him; informally, he was clearly regarded as a saint.

This doesn't really date the Robin Hood legend, but it does date the redaction date of the published version "Gest" -- to probably the first third of the fifteenth century. That almost certainly makes the reference an anachronism. But the extant early sources (the ones the pop depictions of Robin Hood ignore) are most definitely converging on a date in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, with the latter the more likely. The "Gest" on a number of grounds best fits the reign of Edward II.

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 11 Mar 24 - 01:40 PM

Robert

It might be worth getting the Robin Hood Ballads thread going again.

mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=58643

Subject: RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance?
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 11 Mar 24 - 02:30 PM

FreddyHeadey wrote: Robert

It might be worth getting the Robin Hood Ballads thread going again.

You are very likely right, but it might not be good for my blood pressure. :-) Too many people just assume that the version of Robin Hood they learned in childhood is correct. I'm still trying to recover from Henry Gilbert's Robin Hood. :-)