CAPTAIN SWING
©Trev Teasdel Coventry 1976
CHORUS 1..
Light light your torches bright
Burn the hayricks burn
Light light your torches bright
Burn the hayricks burn
The landlord is replacing our labour
With labour saving machines
Whilst we’re in a living ditch
Under the Speenhamland scheme
With high rents and taxes and clergy tithes
We’re robbed of decent lives.
Wages low and the prices so high
Families’ whole might die
(To Chorus..)
We’ll unite in collective action
Sworn to secrecy
If they ask who is this ‘Captain Swing’
You’ve never heard of him.
We’ll fight fight for the right to eat
To feed our families
Fight fight for the right to work
To earn our daily bread.
Chorus 2..
Thrash thrash the threshing machine
Smash the threshing machine
Thrash thrash the threshing machine
Smash the threshing machine.
We’ll send send a warning letter
To the offending gent
“Revenge for thee is on the wing“
From thy determined Swing.
You can read, read the riot act
We’ll riot till we win
Here come, come the Royal Dragoons
To shoot poor Captain Swing
(Chorus 1)
Though we bravely stood our ground’
and tried to put our case
The dragoons they fired their deathly shot
into our hungry face.
Shot, shot were valiant men
Fatherless families abound
And transported to Van Dieman’s land
Yet the Captain is still around
Chorus 1 & 2
Featured on my album Songs From the Coventry Underground, Gnome Label 2007
Written after reading George Rude and Eric Hobsbawm’s book Captain Swing for A level Economic and Social History and reading some early Swing ballads in the college library. I wrote my own version.
Broadgate Gnome said of this on the album ” But that’s not the only reason for choosing his work for this release. He is a master craftsman of his artform. His lyrics are carefully honed with the occasional surprise. The working of the words “under the Speenhamland scheme” into the lyric of Captain Swing, written some 20 years before the arrival of Billy Bragg, is phenomenal and deserves a place in the record books.”