> Anne Briggs > Songs > The Recruited Collier

The Recruited Collier

[ Roud 3503 ; Ballad Index DTrecruc ; trad.]

Anne Briggs sang The Recruited Collier on the theme album The Iron Muse: A Panorama of Industrial Folk Music. This recording was also included in her two compilations Classic Anne Briggs and A Collection. A.L. Lloyd wrote in the original album's sleeve notes:

Enticed by a recruiting party, a young miner enlists, and the sad change in his character breaks his girl's heart. A set of this eighteenth century song was printed in Anderson's Ballad in the Cumberland Dialect (1808). The present version from a collier, J.T. Huxtable of Workington, is in Come All Ye Bold Miners: Ballads and Songs of the Coalfields (1952).

Roy Palmer commented:

It is clear that Lloyd's editorial approach was not merely to reproduce the material sent to him. Sometimes the changes made were small … but others were far-reaching. On Jimmy's Enlisted (or The Recruited Collier) Lloyd laconically notes: “Text from J.T. Huxtable of Workington. A version of this ballad appears in R. Anderson's Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect (1808).” In fact, the original is entitled simply Jenny's Complaint and features not a miner who enlists but a ploughman. A third party, Nichol, talks to Jenny about the wars and Jemmy (as he is called) merely “led” (carted) the coals which remind Jenny of him. Lloyd silently (and brilliantly) remade the song. Although one phrase, “I'se leetin”, sits uncomfortably in the new text, the adaptation has enjoyed considerable success to a tune also supplied by Lloyd to replace Nancy to the Greenwood Gane which Anderson prescribed.

Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts also sang this song in 1995 on their album Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts and on the compilation CD Evolving Tradition.

Jon Boden sang The Recruited Collier as the April 22, 2011 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day.

Lyrics

Anne Briggs sings The Recruited Collier

Oh, what's the matter with you, me lass,
And where's your dashing Jimmy?
The soldier boys have picked him up
And sent him far, far from me.
Last pay day he went off to town,
And them red coated fellows
Enticed him in and made him drunk,
And he'd be better gone to the gallows.

The very sight of his cockade,
It sets us all a-crying,
And me I nearly fainted twice,
I thought that I was dying.
My father would have paid the smart
And he'd run for the golden guinea.
But the sergeant swore he'd kissed the book,
So now they've got young Jimmy.

When Jimmy talks about the wars
It's worse than death to hear him.
I must go out and hide my tears
Because I cannot bear him.
A brigadeer or grenadier
He says they're sure to make him.
But aye, he jibes and cracks his jokes
And begs me not forsake him.

As I walked o'er the stubble field,
Below it runs the seam,
I thought o' Jimmy hewing there,
But it was all a dream.
He hewed the very coals we burn,
And when the fire I's leeting.
To think the lumps was in his hands,
It sets my heart a-beating.

[ For three long years he's followed me,
Now I must live without him.
There's nothing now that I can do
But weep and think about him. ]
So break my heart and then it's o'er,
So break my heart, my dearie.
For I'll lie in the cold green ground
For of single life I'm weary.

Notes and Acknowledgements

Anne omits the first half of the last verse. I've added it from the Digital Tradition to have the full lyrics.

Roy Palmer's explanation was copied from the Mudcat Cafè thread Lyr Add: Recruited Collier which also cites the original poem Jenny's Complaint.