Open Writing

As the Industrial Revolution advanced, workers suffered constant reductions of their standards of living, increased malnutrition, and premature deaths. It was fashionable to describe workers’ revolts as revolution and treason.

It was also asserted that workers intended to do away with the person and position of the monarch, disband the government, and hand control of the country over to the French. This was unmitigated fear-mongering.

A song of the time explains that hunger and starvation were the incipient enemies of the poor, and it expresses no interest in political action, but settles on being fed as the realisation of their ambitions. When the song was written, workers had not then understood that improvements would come only in the wake of intense political action. For the present, assuaging their unremitting hunger was their sole concern. The yearning for social reform had not yet infused most workers, but they were all familiar with malnutrition.

‘Hunting A Loaf’

Good people I pray, now hear what I say,
And pray do not call it sedition;
For these great men of late
They have cracked my poor pate:
And I'm wounded, in woeful condition!

Chorus
And sing fal lal the diddle i do,
Sing fal the diddle i do,
Sing fal the lal day.

For in Derby it's true,
And in Nottingham too,
Poor men to the jail they've been taking;
They say that Ned Ludd,
As I understood,
A thousand wide frames has been breaking.

Chorus

Now it’s so very bad
There's no work to be had,
The poor they are starved in their station;
And if they do steal
Then they’re sent straight off to jail,
Where they're hanged by the laws of the nation.

Chorus

Since this time last year,
I've been very queer,
And I've had a sad national loss;
I've been up and down
From town and to town,
With a shilling to buy a big loaf.

Chorus

The first chap I met
Was Sir Francis Burdett,
He told me he'd been in the Tower;
I told him my mind
Was a big loaf to find,
And he said, "You must ask them in power."

Chorus

Then I thought it was time
To speak to the Prime,
For Perceval he’d take my part;
But a Liverpool man
Soon ended that plan:
With a pistol ball shot in his heart.

Chorus

Then I thought he'd a chance
On a rope for to dance,
Some people would think very pretty;
But he lost all his fun,
Through the country he'd run,
But he found it in fair London City.

Chorus

Now I’ve ended my tale
So I'll sit with my ale,
And drink a good health to the poor;
With a glass of cheap ale
I have told you my tale,
And I'll look for a big loaf no more.

Chorus