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Can you help us a bit (live)

by Mother of Order

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about

Written in Geelong, Australia by W Stitt-Jenkins and posted in local shops in order to raise funds for the people ‘back home.’ This version was picked up and printed by the Ashton and Stalybridge Reporter 25th October 1862

Recorded live at Fiery Bird in Woking, November 2018

lyrics

A “Lancashire Lad” has been writing
Long letters at home to the Press ----
He tells how America’s fighting
Has plunged in the direst distress

The men and the women and children –
The hands of the mill and the pit;
Heartbroken and famished they wander,
And cry, “Con yo help us a bit?”

No more at the bell’s cheery ringing
We hurry away to the mill;
At our labour no longer we’re singing,
The loom and the shuttle are still;

Lord, lead us not into temptation
To thee in our sorrow, we cry,
O stretch forth Thine arm o’er our nation,
Send succour, or thousands must die.

“Con yo help us a bit” oh! our brothers,
Who far from old England have fled
Con yo help the poor fathers and mothers,
And children that perish for bread;

Con yo help us across the wide ocean,
For all kinds of work we are fit;
Dear friends, with the wildest emotion,
We cry, “Con yo help us a bit?”

We are willing to work – oh! how willing! –
But work can no longer be had.
And gone is our very last shilling,
And hunger is driving us mad.

Ah! think on our sad desolation,
And say con yo help us to flit
From wretchedness, woe, and starvation –
Con yo help us, dear sisters, a bit?

To you, oh our sisters, we’re crying
Con you spare some help from your store?
Alas! we are starving and dying,

And your eyes shall behold us no more.
Ah! say con yo revel in riches,
Or peacefully sleep on your bed,
While thousands of Lancashire witches

Are begging for morsels of bread?
Is it true – the fine tales they are telling
Of rivers and mountains of gold?
And that in the land where you’re dwelling
Is room for the young and the old?

That there, in contentment reclining,
Each man neath his fig-tree may sit,
While we with grim hunger are pining?
Oh! try, “Con yo help us a bit?”

credits

released November 28, 2018
Words - W Stitt-Jenkins
Music and Arrangement - Mother of Order

license

all rights reserved

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Mother of Order England, UK

Mother of Order were Cath Rogan and the late Martin Hall. Born from shared politics, shared concerns and a general anarcho- syndicalist outlook on life.

They write and sing songs of industry and songs of love.

Their first album, Warp and Weft is songs of and about the Lancashire Cotton Famine.

They also have a repertoire of bawdy folk songs and modern material with a folk twist ... more

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