Not all workers adapted immediately to the new working patterns demanded by the Industrial Revolution. Many still honoured Saint Monday and took an extra day’s holiday in the week. The new industrial masters took a dim view of this, needless to say, but in this song, so does the cutler’s wife!

The song was apparently written by a Sheffield cutler in 1780 or 1790, and is printed in Roy Palmer’s book Poverty Knock. Ian first learned it for a Radio 4 programme called Something for the weekend, on which occasion he was accompanied on the fiddle by Jon Boden.

We conclude our arrangement with an Oxfordshire version of a tune often known as Old Mrs Wilson, but which in Headington Quarry is used to accompany the morris jig Old Mother Oxford.

Six For Gold