Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs

Subject: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 01:55 PM

Hello All, Is there any good oul swede bashers, culchies,or country hacks could enlighten me on a topic I find fascinating. It was white slavery, so there should be plenty of songs. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: Fergie
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 03:05 PM

an spailpín fanach. The Rocks of Bán.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 04:15 PM

Fergie, Thanks a chara, "Come all ye loyal heroes", I have that one. How about the overseas brigade, english, Geordies byre muckers, Aussies, US guys, know anybody was hired out to our beloved miserable assed farmers, Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: GUEST,DWAcorn
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 04:45 PM

Ralph McTell is famous for his beautiful song " The Girl from the Hiring Fair".

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: nutty
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 05:07 PM

If you put "hiring fair" in the DT/Forum search box you will get a variety of songs and threads that have been discussed previously.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: toadfrog
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 05:34 PM

Well, if I comprehend rightly what a "hiring fair song" is, the dt has Barnyards of Delgaty(Scotland); Cockies of Bungaree (Austrialia); while the forum has Nicky tams, which is either a hiring fair song or something like it. And "Bogie's Bonnie Belle" is also a lot like a hiring fair song and is somewhere the dt, but reception is v. sluggish today, and life is too short to preform searches and provide more clickies from here. Norman Kennedy sings one called "Drumdelegie," which I'll bet can either be found on the dt or elsewhere on the net. Is this what you have in mind by "hiring fair songs," or does the whole song have to be about events at the fair? Jamie Taylor sings one called "The Haill Week O' the Fair," which I think is available via the Bothy Band, and also from the University of Edinburgh I can't find it on the dt.

American hiring of farm labor in the 19th Century was v. similar to practices in Britain. See Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860, pp. 186-187. But so far as I know, no laborer's songs; the closest equivalent would have to be cowboy songs.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: toadfrog
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 05:45 PM

Nutty, I just put in "hiring fair" as you said, and got a whole bunch of threads all of which are about a song called "The Girl from the Hiring Fair," which seems to be a pop or rock song. I think this guy was looking for other songs about hiring fairs, besides that one.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: mooman
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 07:02 PM

And then there's Bogey's Bonnie Belle (which I always mix up and announce as Belle's Bonny Bogey if I'm singing it!).

mooman

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: alison
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 10:20 PM

Ralph McTell's "girl from the hiring fair" is not a pop song...... he wrote it for Fairport Convention... although I prefer Ralph's version.......

it is about a couple who were bought at the hiring fair and fall in love.......

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 10:31 PM

Nothing from me on this one, but an Uncle of mine was very in very poor health and also very kind hearted to us kids. He'd often hire someone to play with us in his absense. One of the locals was into making and flying kites so one Spring my uncle saw him at the bar on a Saturday night and employed him to go out on Sunday and fly kites with us. I have a picture someone took of Uncle Guido that night, down at the local tavern........He was hirin' a kite.

Sorry........Continue with your discussion...........

Spaw

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: John Nolan
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 10:35 PM

Kevin Mitchell's version of "The Magherafelt May Fair" tells of a single Irish girl hoping to attract a husband at a hiring fair. Pragmatic and wistful both. The bothy ballad "Sleepytoon" supplies a useful insight into rotten working conditions and the dogged spirits of the farm workers. The transportation song "Tattie Jock" gives a glimpse into the grim legal treatment that hired farmworkers could expect in the 1800s.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: mg
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 12:28 AM

I just wrote the words but no tune yet about the Hawaian kanakas who were "indentured" by their king to the Hudson's Bay Company here in Vancouver, WA. And I think Darling Nelly Gray is about a slave who has been sold. mg

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: Gary T
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 01:48 AM

The one I know is "Hiring Fair." I couldn't find it in the DT or with a google search. The chorus starts out "And you're welcome with me Johnny..."

I can understand thinking of some hiring fair stories as "white slavery," but that's not what the term means. It has a quite specific definition--the practice of forcing women into prostitution, or the woman's state therein.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From:
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 02:31 AM

My current hiring fair favourite is Copshawholm Fair

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: Ringer
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 05:56 AM

I think you can hire a fair song for about twopence a day.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 07:52 AM

Hello All, Thank to all of you. Gary T , If paying some poor boy or girl, £6.00 for six months hard slogging isn`t a form of white slavery, then do as I have done, and talk to the poor unfortunates who had the bad luck to be carted off from home and finished up with a greedy, cruel old Farmer. Read Brother to the Ox, Paddy the COOP. Children of the Dead End [Patrick McGill] and you will be enlightened. Slan and thanks to all. Ar Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: Ringer
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 11:14 AM

Have there been hiring-fairs within living memory?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: MMario
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 11:24 AM

in the strict technical sense of the word, yes.

Leastwise about 25-30 years ago it was common for a number of corporations to show up at a college or university and pick and choose from among the applicants - and it was not uncommon for them to play one applicant off against another so the company would get the most for their money - these contracts were frequently for a number of years with no compete clauses...

tho' in comparision to what went on in previous centuries, probably "no."

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: IanC
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 11:46 AM

There have been real hiring fairs well within living memory.

Just before WW2, a friend of mine - now 85 - hired himself out at a hiring fair at Carlisle Market Cross. The usual contract was "a year and a day" including (both ends) the day of the fair. Full board was provided during the year and payment at the end of the contract. The employee then went back to the fair, got drunk and hired-on again.

Around the turn of the century, quite a few agricultural labourers from East Anglia were hiring on in Yorkshire as things were bad at home, and the pay was better there. That reminds me of one of the hiring fair songs "Yaddie Hughes".

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 01:21 PM

Hello Bald Eagle, Hiring Fairs had their day at the beginning of World WAR 2. Factories needed all available labour for the war effort. Farmers had to pay a living wage and it was goodbye to slave labour. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: IanC
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 04:31 AM

Ard

Take it from me, what you're saying about hiring fairs and wages is not universally accurate. I have spoken at some length to both hirers-on and farmers in various parts of England and many of them (on both sides) regarded it as a fair system. In some cases, where there was a surplus or shortage of labour, it probably wasn't so easy but I think you're promulgating a biased story.

What I said about East Anglian labourers is a case in point. They went from somewhere where hiring fairs had mostly been long dead to hire on at fairs because the conditions for them were better.

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: sian, west wales
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 07:57 AM

Slightly off topic but ...

Plowing with oxen survived in Wales after disappearing (pretty much) in England. Because the Welsh believed that the ox was an intelligent, more than slightly mystical, animal, they believed that it only worked when happy, and kept amused. So to plough you needed both a ploughman and a lad. The lad's sole duty was to walk backwards in front of the oxen the whole time of ploughing and sing to it clever verses - of riddles, or love, quite often. Not silly verses, as this was an insult to the animals' intelligence.

So ... quite often at hiring fairs, farmers would audition likely lads as it was important for them to have both a good voice AND a large repetoire of songs (to avoid repetition).

Always thought that was kinda interesting ...

sian

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: Wolfgang
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 08:11 AM

Hamiltonsbawn hiring fair (from the DT)

Attention: Do not use the phrase 'hiring fair' in the DT search it will find nothing. For reasons unknown the word 'fair' is not allowed. In the Digitrad and Forum search this phrase works fine.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 11:40 AM

Hello Ian, Take it from me, any old timers I spoke to here in the north of Ireland gave me a different story from yours. You aren`t a VFarmer by any chance. The stories I have read about hired hands even from England gives a picture of a life of misery with the Farmers. Get your hands on a book about a hired hand on a farm in Yorkshire entitled "Brother to the Ox". there are irish books aplenty about this. Slan Ared Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: IanC
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 11:59 AM

Ard

I'm the son and grandson of East Anglian farm labourers. My grandfather was evicted more than once and was once burned out of his tied cottage. I know what I'm talking about, I don't need to read no books about it.

Ian

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 01:19 PM

Hello Ian, And I also worked for the miserable gits, so what are you trying to say that your jolly Old farmer gave you a fair crack of the whip, sure did across the back. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 02:07 PM

Hello Wolfgang, Thanks for your help, I have that one, I live about nine miles from Hamiltonsbawn. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 02:25 PM

Hello John Nolan, The song you mentioned "Tattie Jock" sounds good, any ideas on locating it. and thanks for the other info. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: nutty
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 05:23 PM

If it's white slavery you are interested in then "wife selling " should be included.
These are selection of broadsides from the Bodleian Library on the subject - they are image files so may take a while to load

THE WEDDING

POOR WILL PUTTY

THE CARPENTER'S WIFE>

SALE OF A WIFE

JOHN HOBBS

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: IanC
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 04:09 AM

Ard

No, what I'm saying is that things aren't all universally the same. My father in law was a tenant farmer on 100 acres of Yorkshire hill farm, with one farm man in the cottage next door. Two years in three he did marginally better than the farm man, the other year far worse.

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: Aidan Crossey
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 04:44 AM

Ard mhacha ...

The missus tells me a parcel's arrived wi' a Lurgan postmark on it. Good man. I'll have a look this evening.

Now ... back on thread ... what about Darby O'Leary. Although the phrase hiring fair is never mentioned explicitly, I think it's pretty clear that he's not there entirely of his own volition.

The lyrics are here

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 05:01 AM

Derrymacash, Thanks for Darby O`leary, I see by the lyrics another oul hand that had a Butlins holiday with the tax dodgers [farmers] Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: cetmst
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 07:24 AM

Walk down the streets of many American cities in the early morning and see lines of men at the "employment office" waiting for day labor jobs, mostly consruction, some farming. There are many songs about migrant workers in the US west including Woody Guthrie's "Deportees" and "Pastures of Plenty" and a horror song whose title I can't recall about migrant workers who died when their bus broke down in the desert heat. There are variants of "Buffalo Skinners", men hired to hunt buffalo and then abandoned without wages when the hunt was over. Many collections of logging songs tell of unfair hiring and inadequate wages. Appalachian coal mining songs depict near slavery conditions, see Merle Travis' "Dark As a Dungeon" and "Sixteen Tons". "The Black Fly" by Wade Hemsworth is a delightful song about dam construction in Canada. There are songs about pressmen throughout England and Scotland such as "Weary Cutters". THe modern practice of immigrant ships that promise relocation and jobs is a vicious variant of the hiring fair. The list is depressingly long.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: Aidan Crossey
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 07:32 AM

Nice point, cetmst.

I was about to add something similar myself about the lines of Irish men waiting in Cricklewood or outside Camden Town tube station in London to get a day's unregulated labour on building sites. Men who've lived this day-to-day working life for years. While the wages might not be quite as scandalous as those Ard Mhacha was quoting as having been the going rate in the hiring fair days, I fear that these poor sods are milked while still big and strong and then left to fend for themselves when their strength and vigour goes.

So if the hiring fairs don't survive in name anymore, there are examples not too far from the end of our noses where their modern-day variants thrive.

Those of us who draw a regular wage, have a roof over our heads and are able to think about saving for a rainy day - or for a comfortable retirement, etc. - ought to be thankful!

Subject: Lyr Add: GOD MADE DRINK (O'Neill, Crossey)
From: Aidan Crossey
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 07:53 AM

In fact ...

A mate of mine - Lorcan O'Neill, as fine a guitar player as you're ever likely to meet - once wrote a song "God Made Drink ..." which I only ever learned the chorus of.

When we met up I pressed him for more - all I ever got from him was the first few lines of the first verse. Eventually I got impatient and wrote a version msyelf - retaining Lorcan's first few lines of the first verse and his chorus but completing the first verse and adding two more ... here it is for what it's worth.

God Made Drink ...
Me name is Sean McGeown
I came over on me own
Lured by talk of aisy wages
Searched the bars and situation vacant pages
But all I found in London Town for ages
Was hostels, dole and whiskey binge rampages
But I got a start in time
Digging out a new tube line
Mondays always saw me shattered
All weekend long I'd been out on the blatter
But as long as I was coining what's the matter?
Aisy rake it in and aisy scattered
(cos)
Chorus
God made drink so the Irish wouldn't rule
The world or even their own parish
I think that he was laughing on the day he made that brew
Saying "Good luck and fuck the Irish"

And as the years rolled round
I worked with every gang in London Town
Digging trenches and foundations
Office blocks, suburban railway stations
I lost some gravy buildin' up this nation
But the porter helped to cure me dehydration
And now me strength has gone
I once bate Elephant John
But me muscles now are withered
And the whiskey's ate away me liver
Of me former self, sure now I'm just a sliver
An old man, which a shuffle and a quiver
(And)
Chorus

God rest me uncle Sean
We'll miss him now he's gone
All those songs down in the boozer
A red-faced, hairy-knuckled bruiser
Some say the drink made him a loser
But did a little deeper for the truth, sir
Cos me name is Sean McGeown
I'm the pride of the Goldhawk Road
I'm the first of the second generation
A Paddy brought up in the English nation
And Uncle Sean supplied me education
He's me mentor and me well of inspiration
(He told me)

Chorus

Tune and lyrics Copyright Lorcan O'Neill (additional lyrics by Aidan Crossey)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 09:20 AM

derrymacash, Its a hard oul road, but in my ten years in England I found after the first years hard labour, you spent the next nine avoiding it.I always said Woody Guthrie should have been canonised. St Woody of the Workers. Slan Ard MhACHA.

Subject: Lyr Add: TATTIE JOCK
From: John Nolan
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 10:02 AM

ard mhacha: A version of Tattie Jock is in the archives, but the one below has two or three more verses giving a (a) a broader glimpse of farm life and (b) a kinder portrait of the farmer vis-a-vis his hired workers, and thus a more savage view of systematic working class oppression through the court system in the 1800s.

TATTIE JOCK

Well, ye a' hae heard o' Tattle Jock,
Likewise o' Mutton Peggie.
They had a fairmie ower in Fife.
An' the name o' it was Craigie.

Cho: Hye riddle die, roo rum dir doe,
Hye riddle die, roo rum day.

There was ten pair upon that place,
Likewise ten able men,
It's five they gave for tae kinnle the fire,
And the ither five oot tae scran.

Three months we served with Tattle Jock
And weel we did agree.
Till we found oot that the tattie shed
Could be opened with the bothy key.

We a' went intae the tattle shed,
Our bags were hardly full,
When Tattle Jock in ahint the door
Cried, "Aye, ma lads stand still."

Oh, the first he got was Willie Marr,
The next was Sandy Doo,
There was Jimmy Grey and Wull Moncur
And Jimmy Pethrie flew.

Next day some o' us were drivin' dung,
An' some were at the mill;
The foreman he was at the ploo'
Upon Pitlootie Hill.

They sent for ten big polismen
But nine there only cam',
It dinged them for tae lift us that night,
Us bein' sic able men.

Noo, the hinmaist lad was the wisest een,
The best lad o' us a'.
He jined a man o' war at Leith;
So he didnae need tae stand the law.

When we were getting' oor sentence read
We all stood roon' and roon'
But when we heard o' the fourteen years
Oor tears cam' tricklin' doon.

When Tattie Jock heard tell o' this,
He cried and grat fu' sore;
A thousand guineas he would pay,
If that would ease the score.

A bag o gold he did produce,
Tae pey it there an' then,
But the lawyer only told him money
Wouldna clear his men.

An' when they mairched us up through Perth,
We heard the news boy say,
"It's hard tae see sic able men
Rade aff tae Botany Bay."

When we arrive in Botany Bay
Some letters we will send, Tae tell oor friends o' the hardship we
Endure in a foreign land.

As published in The Scottish Folksinger (1973) by Norman Buchan and Peter Hall

From the singing of Archie Webster of Strathkinness. The song is also included in Fife Songs and Ballads, edited by P. Shepherd.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 11:22 AM

John, Thanks its a cracker,no problem with the dialect, how do our US friends cope. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: pavane
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 11:42 AM

Bodleian ballads library has lots of hiring fair songs - but not with tunes

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: Aidan Crossey
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 11:54 AM

This is a great resource ... thanks!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: ard mhacha
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 01:45 PM

Pavane, Many thanks, I`m in the garden of Eden, hope I don`t see oul Eve. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: GUEST,Mac Tattie
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 02:40 PM

The song Tattie Jock was written based on a true story. Pete Shepheard, editor of Fife songs and Ballads, has spent much time retracing much of the background to this and many other songs.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: John Nolan
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 04:27 PM

Mac Tattie: Is the Fife Songs and Ballads book still available, and if so, from whom?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: GUEST,Mac Tattie
Date: 04 Jul 01 - 06:11 PM

Hi John Nolan, I don't know, try asking Pete Shepheard on [e-mail] Cheers.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: pavane
Date: 05 Jul 01 - 11:04 AM

I still haven't got the hang of the indexes at the Bodleian Ballad library though. If I put 'hiring fair' in the search box, and select index1 or 2, I get nothing at all, but if I just enter Hiring, I get several hits, many which include the phrase 'hiring fair'. Searching on index 3, subject, I get many more hits again. Similarly, New song gets no hits, but song gets lots which include the phrase 'new song'. Strange. Also you can have fun with alternative spellings, such as Monk's march and Moncks march (General Monck was his name).

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: IanC
Date: 05 Jul 01 - 11:08 AM

Pavane

The Bodleian search seems to only deal wit 1 word at a time. Put your 2 words in 2 separate boxes and it works OK. Don't ask me why!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: pavane
Date: 05 Jul 01 - 11:19 AM

I only found this library recently, from another posting on Mudcat, and I have already found the following:
What appears to be the (long lost?) song Beaux of London City, could be linked to the Adderbury Morris dance of the same name (The words fit the tune)
Song Jockey to the Fair, which fits the Morris Dance music (short version)
Song 'Mr Walker the twopenny postman', which seems to be related to tune 'walk of the twopenny postman' also linked to Morris?
A song called Abraham Brown the Sailor, which seems to be an early version of Barnacle Bill
The Beautiful Muff - bawdy song, complete with name of tune, which I have also tracked down
The Infallible Doctor, with words similar to those used by the (Quack) doctor in many mummers' plays

I don't know how much of this has already been recorded, but it is certainly a fascinating site

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: pavane
Date: 05 Jul 01 - 11:20 AM

Thanks for the hint, IanC, I will try it now!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: nutty
Date: 05 Jul 01 - 01:29 PM

I use the browse index which is a lot simpler than the search but just as effective.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hiring fair songs
From: MMario
Date: 05 Jul 01 - 02:12 PM

pavane - you going to share the tune for beautiful muff? Hmmm?