Chorus
These are hard times when you?re poor,
And there?s no work for you,
We have to beg for food to eat
What else can we do?
1
Dad was out of work,
Mum washed people's clothes,
And I was left inside the house
With my sister Rose.
2
I went out to beg for coins
From people in the street.
Rosie followed after me
Begging for food to eat.
3
We went back to find Mum,
Her fingers red and sore,
She finished off the washing
Then started to clean the floor.
4
Dad came back, but still no work,
Tired and dirty too,
We had so few coins for food
It's a wonder we all grew.
5
Now as I grow older,
The days they seem so long,
Just to keep on going,
We need to be so strong.
This is a contemporary song about Yorkshire.
Times were hard in the last part of the 19th century even if you had a job, things were very much worse if the breadwinner was unemployed or too ill to work. The protagonist in this song is the daughter of an unemployed man and a woman who has to take in washing to survive, it is written from a young girl's perspective.
This song was produced as part of a schools-based industrial heritage project - for more information see industrial-heritage.epip.org.uk/