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Brave Dudley Boys - 18th Century traditional Black Country hunger riots song Martin Summers BCfm

1,241 views · Published 6 October 2013 · 3:49 · Indexed 1 November 2026

Channel: Public Enquiry · 2013 · Music

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Brave Dudley Boys

In the days of good queen Bess
Yah boys, ho
In the days of good queen Bess
Yah boys, ho
In the days of good queen Bess
Coventry out done their best
Yah boys, ho boys, oh the brave Dudley boys

But in the times a be,
We've outdone Coventry

Tipp'n lads, they did us join
And we fought the strong combine

We marched into town
Resolved to burn the 'ousen down

Times, they was mighty queer
Vittles, they was powerful dear

So we fought to make corn cheap
We burned them all, of a heap

But the work was scarce begun
When the soldiers came and spoilt the fun

We all run down our pits
Scared almost out of our wits

God bless Lord Dudley Ward
He knowed the times been hard

He called back the sodgermen,
Ya, boys, O!
He called back the sodgermen,
Ya, boys, O!
He called back the sodgermen,
And we'll never riot again.

Na boys, no boys, no the brave Dudley boys!


Notes
This song is said to have come from William Ryland of West Bromwich in the 1840's. It originated in the Corn Laws and the Reform Bill of the early 18th century, though other researchers believe it is later.
Good Queen Bess: Elizabeth I of England (1533 - 1603).
Dudley is a town between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, part of the Black Country. Its boundaries are now indistinguishable from the other parts of the West Midlands conurbation.
sodgers = soldiers
Lord Dudley Ward: Ward is the family name of Lord Dudley. The then Lord Dudley was able to calm the rioters and prevent the soldiers from firing on them.
Roy Palmer, Songs of the Midlands (1972)

CIVIL UNREST IN THE BLACK COUNTRY 1750 - 1837
(Part One: The 'Bread And Butter Riots' of 1766)
by David Cox
http://www.blackcountrysociety.co.uk/articles/b%26briots1.htm
Pre-industrialised England is often represented as a golden age of prosperity and plenty, with well-fed peasants happy with their lot in life, knowing their place in a benevolent and paternalistic society. Reality, as is so often the case, was somewhat different from the myth. This is the first of two articles looking at civil unrest in the Black Country during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
In September 1766 the Annual Register (a yearly compendium of memorable events) remarked:
"there having being many riots, and much mischief done, in different parts of England, in consequence of the rising of the poor; who have been driven to desperation and madness, by the exorbitant prices of all manner of provisions; we shall, without descending to minute particulars, or a strict regard as to the order of time, in which they happened, give a short abstract of these disturbances."
It went on to describe briefly over thirty popular uprisings throughout England, caused by a combination of factors concerned with the price and availability of staple foodstuffs (see Figure 1). Such uprisings were not a new phenomenon in England, but they became increasingly common during the latter half of the eighteenth century due to the fluctuating cost of staple foods. The average price of wheat had remained relatively stable during the first half of the century averaging 34s.11d per quarter-hundredweight for the period 1713-1764, but between 1765 and 1800 it rose to 55s. per quarter-hundredweight, reaching a peak of 128s. per quarter-hundredweight in 1800.
The harvest of 1766 was a particularly poor one, and the number of popular uprisings rose dramatically - '...something like sixty incidents were reported in the press in a dozen weeks'.3 These uprisings were almost unfailingly described as 'riots', but this term is perhaps not apposite for all of the demonstrations witnessed throughout the Black Country in September 1766. The term riot suggests an out-of-control mob, intent on pointless destruction, whereas contemporary sources such as the Annual Register or the Gentleman's Magazine often remark that although goods were seized by force, personal violence was not always employed. Self-control, rather than brute intimidation, was often the guiding force. E.P. Thompson, in his classic The Making of the English Working Class, quotes a contemporary report that at Honiton in Devon, 'in 1766 lace-workers seized corn on the premises of the farmers, took it to market themselves, sold it, and returned the money and even the sacks back to the farmers'.4 Similarly, in the Black Country both the participants and many observers often regarded the uprisings as a justifiable method of righting a perceived wrong, rather than a mindless destructive riot.

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