Captain Swing - Trev Teasdel

CAPTAIN SWING (By Trev Teasdel 1976)

Captain Swing - Trev Teasdel from Trev Teasdel on Vimeo.

CHORUS 1..

Light light your torches bright

Burn the hayricks burn

Light light your torches bright

burn the hayricks burn

Verses

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 comes comes 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

(By Trev Teasdel 1976)

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Written in Coventry 1976 after reading Hobsbawm and Rude's Captain Swing as part of studying Economic and Social History at Henley College in Coventry. Recorded on a Sharp's Double cassette player.

Broadgate Gnome wrote -"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."