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The Honest Ploughman

[ Roud 619 ; Master title: The Honest Ploughman ; Ballad Index WT294 ; Bodleian Roud 619 ; trad.]

William Alexander Barrett: English Folk-Songs Roy Palmer: The Painful Plough Sam Richards and Tish Stubbs: The English Folksinger Alfred Williams: Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames

John Swift sang The Honest Ploughman in 1972 on the Topic/Impact album The Painful Plough that accompanied Roy Palmer’s book of the same name, The Painful Plough. Roy Palmer noted:

The ruthless discarding of workers when they were too old or no longer needed was peculiar neither to agriculture nor the nineteenth century. “One minute they’re treating you like the family and the next minute they’re treating you like an old work horse that they’ve had the best years out of—and they’d just shoot you, I think, if they had their way”: thus a Warwickshire farm labourer in 1971, echoing this song, another in [W.A. Barrett’s collection [English Folk-Songs (1891)].

Lyrics

John Swift sings The Honest Ploughman

Come all you jolly husbandmen and listen to my song,
I’ll relate the life of a ploughman, and not detain you long;
My father was a farmer, who banished grief and woe,
And my mother was a dairymaid - that’s ninety year ago.

My father had a little farm, a harrow and a plough,
My mother had some pigs and fowls, a pony and a cow;
They didn’t hire a servant, but they both their work did do,
As I have heard my parents say, just ninety year ago.

The rent that time were not so high, but far as I will pen,
For now one family’s nearly twice as big as then were ten;
When I were born, my father used to harrow, plough and sow,
I think I’ve heard my mother say, ’twere ninety year ago.

To drive the plough, my father did a boy engage,
Until that I had just arrived at seven year of age;
So then he did no servant want, my mother milked the cow,
And with the lark I rose each morn to go and drive the plough.

When I were fifteen year of age, I used to thrash and sow,
I harrowed, ploughed, and harvest time I used to reap and mow;
When I were twenty year of age, I could manage well the farm;
I could hedge and ditch and plough and sow, or thrash within the barn.

At length when I were twenty-five, I took myself a wife,
Compelled to leave my father’s house, as I had changed my life.
Oh, the younger children in my place my father’s work would do,
Then daily as an husbandman to labour I did go.

My wife and me, though very poor, could keep a pig and cow;
She could sit and knit and spin, and I the land could plough;
There nothing was upon a farm at all, but I could do:
I feel things very different now - that’s many year ago.

We lived along contented and banished pain and grief;
We had not then occasion to ask for poor relief.
But now my hairs are grown quite grey, I cannot well engage
To work as I had used to do — I’m ninety year of age.

When a man has laboured all his life to do his country good,
He’s respected just as much, when old, as a donkey in a wood.
His days are gone and past and he may weep in grief and woe:
The times are very different now to ninety year ago.