My Name It is Alice
My name it is Alice White, I’d have you all to know I went and left my father’s farm, a long, long, time ago My mother called me a silly lass, she said I’d rue the day That I followed on the heels of the navives. My first man it was Dandy Jack, he...
The Stroudwater Canal
“Yet mostly we seem to notice very little of this, and even less to savour it. So much in the visionary landscape with its circus of philosophizing objects, floating texts and people-machines goes unremarked. Esoteric symbols in petrol station logos, accidental...
They Call Me Rosie Cooper
They call me Rosie Cooper, I doubt you’ve heard the name I was born in eighteen eighty five, from Inglesham we came Me father was a boatman, we lived on a narrow boat And we worked the canals of England, from our own home afloat Chorus : Through the cold and...
The Union
So many are the carriers whose loads, they have declined. So many are the boatmen, to starvation are resigned. The railway takes our livelihood and to compete we must Accept a cut in wages to still earn an honest crust. Chorus: The union is our strength and will be...
Smuggling
Smuggling? I know there’s little evidence of smuggling in our county, But let’s imagine there might have been communities, Where customary right prevailed over the law … Down there, on the Severn, Where it meanders along, Or down there, in those sequestered hamlets,...
When The Wind Blows Cold in Winter
When the wind blows cold in winter, When the sun sets steep behind the Severn, When the herons keep their rebarbative watch, And roosting cries cut the twilight sky, It’s hard to see the outlines of trows and barges Making their way to the Five Valley wharves, Barges...