The Cropper Lads

Lyrics

1
Come, cropper lads of great renown,
Who love to drink good ale that’s brown,
And strike each haughty tyrant down
With ’atchet, pike and gun.

Chorus
The cropper lads for me,
And gallant lads they’ll be,
With lusty stroke the shearframes broke,
The cropper lads for me.

2
What though the specials still advance,
And soldiers nightly round us prance,
The cropper lads still lead the dance,
With ’atchet, pike and gun.

3
And night by night when all is still,
And the moon is hid behind the hill,
We forward march to do our will,
With ’atchet, pike and gun.

4
Great Enoch he shall lead the van,
Stop him who dares, stop him who can,
Press forward every gallant man,
With ’atchet, pike and gun.

The 'Three Score and Ten' group are Jim Potter, Brian Senior and Ivan Robinson

This is a traditional song about Yorkshire, collected in Yorkshire.

Provenance

I first heard this stirring song of the Luddite actions of 1812 in the 60s being sung by the same lead singer here, Jim Potter. In those days he sang with a group called appropriately enough The Cropper Lads. Unfortunately this impressive group of male harmony singers never made an album and very few recordings have survived. At 77 Jim can still put in the right amount of power a song like this requires.

Croppers, although relatively few in numbers, played a central part in the activities of the machine-breaking Luddites in Yorkshire. Prior to the introduction of machinery to do the job they had been top-grade apprenticed craftsmen, trained to produce a smooth even nap on the woollen cloth after it had been woven. They cropped the woven cloth with heavy shears and were highly skilled, and relatively highly paid so had more to lose than most by the introduction of the machinery. Prior to this they had blacked any cloth produced in a gig mill and therefore had already shown their anti-machinery stance and solidarity with the weavers. Thus croppers joined the Nottinghamshire Luddites in raids on mills to break the machinery which resulted in desperate battles between mill-owners backed by the police and militia, and the Luddites, which resulted in much bloodshed and even death. The main action took place in and around Huddersfield. See also TYG63 Foster’s Mill for a related song.

Great Enoch was the name given to a big hammer used to smash the machinery, rather ironically as it was named after Enoch and James Taylor of Marsden near Huddersfield who were the ingenious blacksmiths who invented the cropping machine.