I’ve been looking through Roy Palmer’s A Ballad History of England for anything suitable to put up for the coronation. I thought of something written for the restoration, but the only piece I could find like that is this ballad by Henry Jones of Oxford, published in 1660. It celebrates Charles II hiding from Cromwell and his troopers in the oak at Boscobel, which then became commemorated every year afterwards as Oak Apple Day. Palmer gives a description how it was celebrated in one school in Leicestershire, which is rather alarming: the children went around with stinging nettles wrapped in dock leaves looking to inflict a few stings on people who were insufficiently royalist. Given the debacle yesterday, when the Met police was arresting anti-monarchy protesters simply for the terrible crime of protesting, I think some of those cops have the same mentality. The ballad goes on to describe how Charles pretended to be the servant of the serving maid helping him to escape, and there’s several touches of humour as the disguised Charles comes a cropper in front of Roundhead troopers, who all have a good laugh. He finds sanctuary at the Three Crowns in Bristol, where he’s told to wind up the jack, but overwinds it instead. The ballad finally ends with Charles catching a ship to safety in France.
I recite the ballad’s lyrics and also play the tune as reproduced in the book. I don’t, however, do the two together because words and music are printed separately and I haven’t worked out how to fit the one to the other. Sorry.
I hope people enjoy it, whatever their views on the monarchy.
I posted this video on my Beast Rabban YouTube channel yesterday about the ballad ‘Where the Trouble Lies’, written by Fred Stott, a Barnsley collier to support the children of striking miners during the 1926 general strike. I found it in Roy Palmer’s A Ballad History of England: From 1588 to the Present Day (London: BT Batsford 1979). The book also contains an extract from Walter Greenwood’s autobiography, There Was a Time, about the hardship that came to the workers in his native Salford afford the collapse of the strike. Unfortunately there’s no printed music for the ballad, so it’s just me reciting it as a piece of poetry along with the accompanying piece from Greenwood. I recorded it as I thought it was once again topical now that public sector workers are striking for fair wages above the inflation rate so they can afford to heat their homes and feed their families.
The words of the ballad are:
Where The Trouble Lies
There is trouble in England on this very day.
Royalty owners say there will be while Cooks wants his way,
But its those people who above miners hold the hammer
Who say out of every ton of coal you get we only want a tanner.
It is this class of people who have got the check
Never get out of bed before ten not one day in a week
While just four hours before they awake,
For the idle rich the colliers life is at stake.
They say they need these tanners to send their kids to college,
But its hard luck for the minders to have to pay for their knowledge,
Their children but have tennis and other sorts of games
Whilst a collier can’t afford a fire-guard to keep his off the flames.
A collier’s kid on scooter general scoots,
When he has had it just a week he needs a pair of boots,
But he cannot have any although he uses cheek
For his father is a miner and gets thirty bob a week.
We miners don’t want the Earth to which they owners say we belong,
But we want a living wage, in that there’s nothing wrong.
Nor we cannot help our fore-fathers who fought and lost the land,
So a fair’s day’s work and fair day’s pay, then we shall be a happy band.
The royalties referred to were paid to the landowners, who owned the land on which the mines were situated. They were paid per ton of coal extracted. A.J. Cook was the miner’s leader during the strike. He coined the slogan ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day’.
This is just a video of me reading the lyrics for a ballad written in 1630, lamenting that ‘The Poor Man Pays For All’ and playing the tune accompanying it. It’s a bitter attack on the exploitation of the poor by the rich of various professions, including usurers, courtiers, lawyers, pub landlords, brewers, candle-makers, bakers and maltsters. It was written during a period of high inflation caused by the influx of gold from the Spanish colonies in South America. This caused the poor to become poorer, while benefiting enterprising landlords, yeomen farmers and merchants. So like today’s cost of living crisis, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
Words and music from Roy Palmer, A Ballad History of England from 1588 to the Present Day (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1979)
When most people think of the transportation of convicts, they probably think of Australia. But before Britain started sending its convicts there, the destination in the 17th and 18th centuries was America. There’s a ballad lamenting the fate of such criminals, ‘The Lads of Virginia’, in Roy Palmer’s A Ballad History of England From 1588 to the Present Day (London: B.T. Batsford 1979), p. 67. The section discussing the policy on the previous page, 66, taken from A.G.L Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies, (Faber 1971) gives a short description of the history of the trade and the way the British government paid merchants to carry it out. It also suggests that once in America, the convicts were sold to the plantation masters. The extract runs
‘For most of the seventeenth century, merchants trading with the plantations were willing, and often anxious, to carry out the relatively few convicts who were sent; bu8t as time went on they found some, particularly women or bad characters, who were difficult to dispose of, and they became reluctant to take them… After the [Transportation] Act of 1718 the Treasury let regular contracts for the job, first for £3 a head from London and £5 from ‘other parts’ but after 1727, £5 for all; when added to the sale price this allowed a good profit, even taking into account losses through sickness or death on the voyage.
The ‘trade’ grew as the years went by. Between 1729 and 1745 the two contractors for London and the Home Counties sent out an average of 280 a year, which suggests that about 500 a year were sent from all England. In 1753 there were nearly 800. During the Seven Years’ War, 1756-63, fewer were transported, for many convicts were sent to the army, the navy and the dockyards… After 1763 transportation to America increased again, and between 1769 and 1776 about 960 convicts a year were sent out. The demand for convict labour in the plantations was so high that in 1772 the Treasury was able to stop paying its £5 subsidy, though contractors were for a time still able to persuade local authorities to pay…. Between 1719 and 1772, the years of the subsidy payments, 17,742 were sent from London and the Home Counties, and perhaps 30,000 from the whole of England. At least two-thirds went to Virginia and Maryland, and very probably more.
Was it an effective punishment? Sir John Fielding, magistrate and penal reformer, thought it was, though in 1766 Mr Justice Perrott declared that for common offenders it was no punishment at all….’
Those Monmouth rebels, who Judge Jefferies didn’t hang, were also transported to the new world and sold, though they were taken to the Caribbean colonies and sold to the planters for sacks of sugar. The transported convicts also included Irish rebels, and I’ve been told that you can still tell which of the slave cabins they occupied on the plantations by the shamrocks they painted on them.
I have to say that while I was aware of convict transportation, I wasn’t aware that once there they were sold, except in the case of the Monmouth rebels. This makes the practice look like penal slavery, which existed in ancient Rome and early medieval Europe. This punished certain types of criminals by selling them as slaves. I feel that the similarity between convict transportation and penal slavery also somewhat complicates the issue surrounding transatlantic African slavery, as it shows that certain punishments inflicted on Whites also approached a form of slavery or unfreedom. Back in Britain, the Scots miners at the time were also unfree. They were bondmen, who were effectively the property of the mine owners and even had to wear something like a slave collar around their necks. It also raises issues when it comes to the payment of reparations for slavery. If reparations are to be paid to the Black community for their abduction, exploitation and brutalisation during the era of the slave trade, it can also be argued that other groups, who suffered a similar fate like the transported criminals and rebels to America and the West Indies, and Scots mining communities in Britain for the enslavement of their ancestors.
The Diggers were a radical 17th century Protestant sect during the time of the British Civil War. They believed that all land should be held in common, all men being created equal by the Almighty, and were firmly against both the Cavaliers, the gentry and the priesthood. They tried to set up a colony in St. George’s Hill, a piece of common land near Weybridge in Surrey, but their homes were pulled down and the movement squashed. One of their leaders, Gerard Winstanley, who advocated their political and theological doctrines in his A New Yeeres Gift, also wrote this song about them.
In this video I explain that before the rise of modern newspapers, people got their news through broadside ballads, popular songs written about the issues and news of the day. I got this from Roy Palmer’s excellent A Ballad History of England (London: B.T. Batsford 1979), which collects various ballads from 1588 to the late 20th century. Ballads were still being written in the 20th century, though the medium had changed to recordings rather sheet music. One of the last was about a dispute at British Steel in 1975.
I recite the lyrics and then play the tune given in the book. I regret I can’t sing and play the keyboard at once.
The lyrics are
You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now,
You noble Diggers all, stand up now,
The wast land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name
Your digging does maintain, and persons all defame,
Stand up now, standup now.
Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now,
Your houses they pull down, stand up now.
Your houses they pulldown to fright your men in town,
But the gentry must come down, and the poor shall wear the crown.
Stand up now, Diggers all.
With spades and hoes and plowes, stand up now, stand up now,
With spadesand hoes and plowes stand up now,
Your freedom to uphold, seeing Cavaliers are bold
To kill you if they could, and rights from you to hold,
Stand up now, Diggers all.
Theire self-will is theire law, stand up now, stand up now,
Theire self-will is theirlaw, stand up now.
Since tyranny came in they count it now no sin
To make a gaole a gin, to sterve poor men therein.
Stand up now, Diggers all.
The gentryeare all round, stand up now, stand up now,
The gentrye are all round, stand up now.
The gentrye are all round, on each side they are found,
Theire wisdom’s so profound, to cheat us of our ground.
Stand up now, stand up now.
The lawyers they conjoin, stand up now, stand up now,
The lawyers theyconjoyne, stand up now,
To arrest you they advise, such fury they devise,
The devill in them lies, and hathblinded both their eyes,
Stand up now, stand up now.
The clergy they come in, stand upnow, stand up now,
The clergy they come in, stand up now.
The clergy they come in, and say it is a sin
That weshould now begin, our freedom for to win.
Stand up now, Diggers all.
The tithe they yet will have, stand up now, stand up now,
The tithes they yet will have stand up now.
The tithes they yet will have, and lawyers their fees crave,
And this is they say is brave, to make the poor their slave.
Stand up now, Diggers all.
‘Gainst lawyers and gainst priests, stand upnow, stand up now,
‘Gainstlawyers and gainst priests stand up now.
For tyrants they are both evenflatt against their oath,
To grant us they are loath free meat and drink and cloth.
Stand up now, Diggers all.
The club is all their law, stand up now, stand up now,
The club is all their law, stand up now.
The club is all their lawto keep men in awe,
Buth theyno vision saw to maintain sucha law.
Stand up now, Diggers all.
The Cavaleers are foes, stand up now, stand up now,
The Cavaleers are foes, stand up now;
The Cavaleers are foes, themselves they do disclose
By verses not in prose to please the singing boyes.
Stand up now, Diggers all.
To conquer them by love, come in now, come in now,
To conquer them by love, come in now;
To conquer themby love, as itt does you behove,
For hee is King above, now power is like to love,
Glory heere, Diggers all.
Similar to the Diggers were the Levellers, another radical Protestant sect which was extremely strong in the army. They believe in the extension of the franchise to the male heads of households, which was dangerously democratic for the 17th century, as well as state provided schools, hospitals and care homes for the elderly. They still exert a powerful influence in the Labour party.
A Ballad History of England: From 1588 to the Present Day, by Roy Palmer (London: BT Batsford 1979).
From the 16th century to the 20th, the broadside ballad was part of the popular music of British working people. They were written on important topics of the day, and printed and published for ordinary people. They would be sung by the ballad sellers themselves while hawking their wares. This book is a collection of popular ballads, assembled and with introductory notes by the folklorist Roy Palmer. It begins with the song ‘A Ioyful New Ballad’ from 1588 about the Armada, and ends with ‘The Men Who Make The Steel’ from 1973 about the steelworkers’ strike. Unlike the earlier songs, it was issued as a record with three other songs in 1975. The ballads’ texts are accompanied by sheet music of the tunes to which they were sung. Quite often the tunes used were well-known existing melodies, so the audience were already familiar with the music, though not the new words which had been fitted to them.
The ballads cover such important events in English and wider British history as a Lincolnshire witch trial; the draining of the fens; the Diggers, a Communist sect in the British Civil War; Oak Apple Day, celebrating the narrow escape of Charles II from the Parliamentarians in 1660; the defeat of the Monmouth Rebellion; the execution of Jacobite rebels in 1715; the South Sea Bubble; Dick Turpin, the highwayman; the Scots defeat at Culloden; emigration to Nova Scotia in Canada; Wolfe’s capture of Quebec; the enclosures; the Birmingham and Worcester Canal; the 18th century radical and advocate for democracy, Tom Paine; the mechanisation of the silk industry; the establishment of income tax; the death of Nelson; the introduction of the treadmill in prison; the Peterloo Massacre and bitter polemical attacks against Lord Castlereagh; Peel’s establishment of the police; body snatching; the 1834 New Poor Law, which introduced the workhouse system; poaching; the 1839 Chartist meeting at Newport; Queen Victoria’s marriage to Albert; Richard Oastler and the factory acts; the repeal of the Corn Laws; Bloomers; the construction of the Oxford railway; Charles Dickens‘ visit to Coketown; the Liverpool Master Builders’ strike of 1866; agitating for the National Agricultural Union of farmworkers; the introduction of the Plimsoll line on ships; an explosion at Trimdon Grange colliery in County Durham; a 19th century socialist song by John Bruce Glasier, a member of the William Morris’ Socialist League and then the ILP; the Suffragettes; soldiers’ songs from the Boer War and the First World War; unemployed ex-servicemen after the War; the defeat of the General Strike; the Blitz; Ban the Bomb from 1958; and the Great Train Robbery.
It also includes many other songs from servicemen down the centuries commemorating the deaths of great heroes and victories; and by soldiers, sailors and working people on land protesting against working conditions, tax, and economic recessions and exorbitant speculation on the stock markets. Some are just on the changes to roads, as well as local disasters.
This is a kind of social history, a history of England from below, apart from the conventional point of view of the upper or upper middle class historians, and shows how these events were viewed by tradesmen and working people. Not all the songs by any means are from a radical or socialist viewpoint. The ballad about Tom Paine is written against him, though he was a popular hero and there were also tunes, like the ‘Rights of Man’ named after his most famous book, celebrating him. But nevertheless, these songs show history as it was seen by England’s ordinary people, the people who fought in the navy and army, and toiled in the fields and workshops. These songs are a balance to the kind of history Michael Gove wished to bring in a few years ago when he railed against children being taught the ‘Blackadder’ view of the First World War. He’d like people to be taught a suitably Tory version of history, a kind of ‘merrie England’ in which Britain is always great and the British people content with their lot under the benign rule of people like David Cameron, Tweezer and Boris. The ballads collected here offer a different, complementary view.
Last week, I posted the tune for the radical song, ‘The Agitator’, from Roy Palmer’s A Ballad History of England. As with nearly all the other tunes from that book, I hadn’t noted down the words. Jess kindly supplied further information on them, pointing out that it was written in the 1870s to support the Agricultural Labourers’ Union. She also supplied further background information about the Union and the songs written by its members in their campaign for recognition and better wages and conditions. See the post ‘Radical Balladry and Tunes for Toilers: The Agitator, Part 2’. Now she’s kindly supplied the lyrics for the song itself.
The Union’s founder, Joseph Arch, said
Of course I was called an agitator; so I was, because everyone, who stirs people up to do things is an agitator, but those who so named me attached a bad meaning to the word. I was agitating for the right and not for the wrong; I was no ‘Arch Apostle of Arson’, as some one chose to call me. The Bishop of Gloucester (Dr Ellicott) was one of my worst enemies in the early days of the movement. He wanted me, and those, like me, ducked in the horse pond. As to the parsons generally, I never expected them to have much sympathy with us. Their stock argument against the Union was that it was ‘setting class against class’. This was their poll-parrot cry. ‘Oh yes, said they, ‘the men have a perfect right to try and improve themselves, and we will help them; but the Union is setting class against class’.
According to Palmer and Pamela Horn, who wrote a biography of Arch in 1977, the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union was founded in 1872. He believes that ‘The Agitator’ was written the following year, 1873, by the Union’s secretary, Henry Taylor. Taylor was a carpenter, who was admitted to the Union because of his previous trade union experience. The farm labourers’ unions produced a great number of songs, which were collected into a pamphlet, Songs for Singing at Agricultural Labourers’ Meetings (London and Leamington). These proved to be popular. According to Harold Evans in his Radical Fights of Forty Years, the pamphlet sold 120,000 copies.
The lyrics go
The Agitator
Tune – The Nobby Head of Hair
A jolly, jolly ploughboy I am, as you may see,
But never mind, I always strive to live by honesty;
I’ve always done my very best, by hard work, fare, and sweat, –
To get about the winid, boys, but I’m never out of debt.
Chorus
So I’ll agitate, I’ll agitate, whatever folks may say,
Till all have joined the Union, and get a fair days’ pay.
We care not what the Parsons say, -though they’re the chaps to know,
They say that all who agitate, to their dark friend must go;
And if ’tis tru, ’tis very clear, themselves had best look out,
So milt their agitation is, they often get the gout.
We’ll agitate, etc.
The farmers say they can’t afford to pay us proper wage;
But still they keep their carriages, and follow fashion’s rage;
‘Tis true that some poor farmers have their necks beneath the heel
Of selfish Lords, and unjust laws, which soon we must repeal.
We’ll agitate, etc.
The ‘Lords’ complain their rent of land, per cent. enough don’t pay,
‘Political Economy’s’ a law we must obey,-
If so, they’ll very soon become defunct throughout the land,
For ‘mongst the People I’m quite sure, for Lords there’s no demand.
We’ll agitate, etc.
They say the Labourers are not Serfs, – that we have liberty;
With our wages and our perquisites, how happy we might be;
But if we join the ‘Union’ chaps, say nought of better wage,-
O what a flare-up all at once! don’t they go into a rage?
We’ll agitate, etc.
They turn us out of house and home, they sack us there and then,
But off we go to other jobs,- we’ll do it, boys, like men;
For if to be successful with our cause we are inclined,
Why, then, a little sacrifice, my boys, we must not mind.
We’ll agitate, etc.
Our cause will prosper in the end, for all th’oppressors might;
We’ll do our best to help ourselves – ‘God will defend the right’;
‘The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower’,
So let us all take heart again, and whilst we have the power,
We’ll agitate, etc.
Like very many of the other songs I’ve posted up here, it’s very much of its time. Nevertheless, also like the other songs, parts of it are still very relevant. People are being forced heavily into debt, and forced from their homes. And we are being led by an aristocratic government that keeps invoking economics to justify their attacks on the poor and working and lower middle classes. So let’s show them that, as the song says, there’s no demand for lords in 21st century Britain.
Last week I posted the sheet music for ‘The New Poor Law and the Farmer’s Glory’ from Roy Palmer’s A Ballad History of England. As with very many of the other tunes I’ve posted, I didn’t have the words, but assumed from the song’s title that it was about the hated ‘New Poor Law’, introduced by the Liberals in 1834 that set up the workhouses. That’s indeed exactly what the song’s about, and Jess has kindly sent me the words to the song. It was written by William Lamborn of Uffington. They go
I was forced as a stranger to wander from home
And all through the parishes to Faringdon to come
There to have my head shaved, which filled me with woe
And many a poor creature they have served also.
Home, home, sweet home,
There’s no place like home.
At six in the morning the bell it doth ring,
When every man’s allowance of ocum doth bring,
And if we do not pick it just as the keeper please,
He will be sure to stint you of your small bread and cheese,
Home, home, sweet home etc.
When the corn they do bring, to grinding we must go.
Both pease and both beans, and barley also;
And if we do but grumble, or even seem to gloom,
Full well we know the consequence, the blindhouse is our doom.
Home, home, sweet home, etc.
At seven in the evening, the bell it doth ring
When every man up stairs is obliged to swing,
Upon the iron bedsteads there he’s forced to lie,
Some a grieving, some a groaning, until the break of day.
Home, home, sweet home, etc.
And many more things, which I know to be true.
Such as parting man and wife, and children also,
O! what heathens and what brutes, are in our civil land,
For breaking the good laws which were made by God and man.
Home, home, sweet home, etc.
Beware, you blow’d out farmers, you noblemen beside,
though you may laugh and sneer, and at the poor deride,
How will you bear your sentence, upon the day of doom,
When you will call for water, to cool your parching tongue.
Home, home, sweet home, etc.
Perhaps you wont believe me, or care not what I say,
I will be bound that you will all upon a future day;
For I know that some judgment will soon you overtake,
Either in this world, or in the burning lake.
Home, home, sweet home, etc.
For those who made the poor laws they are the spawn of hell,
And of those that do uphold them the truth to your I’ll tell,
For the devil is their master, who put it in their heads,
And this they will prove all on their dying beds,
Home, home, sweet home etc.
So now I will conclude, and finish my sad tell,
I’ve given you all warning, before you are in hell;
And if you wont believe me, you will find it is true,
For God has declar’d it to oppressors as is their due.
Home, home, sweet home, etc.
The reference to the farmers and noblemen in hell asking for water ‘to cool their parching tongue’ come’s from Christ’s parable of Dives and Lazarus. Lazarus, a poor beggar, lies at the gate of Dives, the rich man, but is given no help by him. They both die, but whereas Lazarus ascends to paradise to be with Abraham, Dives finds himself in hell. He calls to Lazarus for help, but Lazarus cannot. He is not able even to answer Dives request to give him some water to put on his tongue.
This is clearly a very bitter song, which accurately describes conditions in the workhouse. Inmates were forced to pick oakum to provide caulking for ships, but doing this for too long wrecked their hands. As for the chorus of ‘Home, home, sweet home’, it’s very much a bitter comment on the song, ‘Home, Sweet Home’, which was composed at the same time. I can remember listening to a BBC radio programme on British music through the ages broadcast on Christmas, 1999, which remarked that the song, ‘Home, Sweet Home’, must have been viewed extremely bitterly by some because of the immense hardship and deprivation inflicted on the poor through the New Poor Law.
It’s clearly of its time, but, like many of the others I’ve posted here, it’s still relevant because of the way the Tories and Tory Democrats are reintroducing aspects of the workhouse and the legislation that supported. Such as the principle of less eligibility, that conditions on benefit should be made so hard and humiliating as possible in order to deter people from claiming it. And people have died, and are losing their homes and dignity through the Coalition’s welfare reforms, just as they did in Victorian Britain.
I think it’s entirely possible that the song could be revived, if altered a bit to make it rather more relevant to today’s conditions, to make this timeless point about the Tories attitude to the poor. Especially as we are led by farmers – Iain Duncan Smith – and noblemen – Cameron, Clegg and George Osborne.
Yesterday, I put up the sheet music for the Diggers’ Song, from Roy Palmer’s A Ballad History of England. As usual, I didn’t have the words, but Jess kindly supplied them, as well as the another Digger song, The Diggers’ Christmas Carol. As well as the Diggers, another radical Civil War sect were the Ranters. Jess in her comment to my post of the Diggers’ Christmas Carol, has also provided two examples of their poetry, expressing their radical, pantheist, Christian beliefs, along with another poem by Gerrard Winstanley, the Diggers’ ideologue. Jess writes
Ranter Poems
“The Saints in virtue, which did aye excel,
This hainous heresie condemn’d to hell;
The General Councils with considerate ire
Adjudg’d these crimes to be calcin’d with fire.
Yee that so boast of spirit to be brim full,
Which say yee have no sin, your selves yee gull.
Com all yee missed, erring, gross mistakers,
Vain glorious Ranters, or censorious Quakers;
Bring all your tricks, your toies and wrested sleights,
Let’s poise them by the Sanctuaries weights.
Lord, if wee sin against thee and offend,
(For who sin’s not, that here his dayes doth spend?)
Wash me, O wash nee throughly from my sin,
Blood, and pollution which I wallow’d in. ”
[Divine poems being meditations upon several sermons, ….. And put into vers by William Wood of Eckington, Gent. 1655]
Another group of dissidents from round the same period as The Diggers were those termed ‘Ranters’. They are generally believed to have evolved from the Familist sect of Elizabethan times, whose core beliefs were ‘that perfection may be attained in this life’, denial of the Sabbath as a holy day, everyday should be a sabath and repentence must precede remission of sins’ [Hill, p.184]
They were known to hold their ‘meetings’ and festivals in pubs where the use of tobacco and alcohol was intended to heighten spiritual vision’. To more straight-laced sects ranter behaviour was licentiousness. The classic text on the group is A.L. Morton’s ‘World of The Ranters’, Nigel Smith edited a collection of their pamphlets whilst Christopher Hill devotes two chapters to them in his ‘World Turned Upside Down’
The pieces here come from two sources. Hill reprints the first in his ‘World Turned’
A Christmas Carol
They prate of God; Believe it fellow creatures”
There s no such bugbear; all was made by Nature.
We know all came of nothing, and shall pass
Into the same condition once it was,
By Nature’s power and that hey grossly lie
That say there’s hope of immortality.
Let them but tell what a soul is, then
We will adhere to these mad brain-sick men.
[Hill World Turned….” from ‘The Arraignment and Tryall, with a Declaration of the Ranters” (1650)]
The second two were found in the Clarke Mss [Also the original source of the better known ‘Diggers Song’] by Anne Laurence and published by her in ‘The Review of English Studies, Vol 31, 1980’ and are dated by her to c.1650. ‘ I have kept the spelling of her transcriptions from Clarke 18
Peter Davidson ‘Poetry and Revolution’ (1998) collects a lot of verse from the period, including a couple of other Winstanley poems. I
My Flesh the plagues of God consume,
With all Relacions of the same,
The which now makes mee out of Tune,
And I shall not bee in right frame;
Untill the vialls of Gods wrath.
Uppon this Earth of mine be powr’d,
And all the Idolls of the same.
Hee quite hath turned out of doores
For Christ our Kinge shall all things chuse
Out of his Kingedome that offend,
All things therin that are impure
Hee bringeth to a totall end,
And when those thinges are fully wrought
Such libertie then wee shall see
Within the Temple of our God
For Wee his Temple then shall bee,
For wee shall then rejoice and singe
Still praysing him that is our might
And ever Triumph in our Kinge
Hee is our libertie and Light.
[From Valentine Sharpe to J. Radman Castle Mary & Margery.]
This is another tune from Roy Palmer’s A Ballad History of England. Like the others I’ve posted up, I don’t the words for it. Its place amongst the other ballads, which I copied from Roy’s book, suggests that it comes from the seventeenth century. So, I wonder if it’s about the Diggers, the Civil War Communist movement, that attempted to set up an ideal community on common land at St. George’s Hill in Surrey in 1649. They were inspired by Gerrard Winstanley, a cloth trader and farm labourer, whose Communist ideas were based on his radical mysticism, in which he hailed Christ as ‘the head Leveller’. The Digger movement was eventually suppressed by the local landlords, who destroyed the colony’s crops.
They and the Levellers still exert a certain influence on British Socialism and radicalism today. There was a drama documentary about them made by one of the radical British directors in the 1970s. This is still available on DVD from the British Film Institute, I believe. I have seen copies around in various record and DVD stores, so it’s definitely still around, if you’re interested. More recently, the British film, A Field in England, was released the other year. Set in the Civil War, it was about the debates over society, politics and religion of the period through the perspective of the local characters debating what they should do over a particular field. Possibly not one of the most exciting ideas for a film, it was nevertheless praised by the critics for its ability to create drama and tension through skilful direction and camera work. I’ve also got a feeling that amongst the great British thesps starring in the movie was Sean Bean, best known as ‘Sharpe’ from the series of books and TV series set in the Napoleonic Wars.
An excerpt from Winstanley’s A New-Yeers Gift for the Parliament and Armie of 1650 is included in the collection of 17th century political texts, Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing in Stuart England, ed. by David Wootton, (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1986) 317-332.
On the other hand, the tune could simply be about people who have to dig for their living, rather than the radical political movement. In which case, it’s still interesting as another document on working class life from that period.
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