"CHARADE" : HARD TIMES IN OLD ENGLAND

My continuing digging at Dalton Castle has turned up a song. The Dalton News of 1886 ran a  column of games, riddles and poems called Charades, and this comes from a John Myers, a regular contributor of state-of-the-nation verse..this one is in the vein of Hard Times Of Old England, but it's references are very specific...a snapshot of a moment.

The News is a pretty good paper. The national and overseas news is thorough, there's lots of sport, local court reports and waspish colour stories .  A fair bit of it looks like syndicated material, and the "Charades" column  has no local references so I wondered if J Myers was a stringer, a pseudonym or a committee.  But Myers is a local name and there was a J Myers and family in Dalton at around this time...
First port of call is the Vaughan Williams Library at Cecil Sharp House, where me and Mike found a wealth of local material earlier in the year...

Nick  at CSH tells us.."Thank you for your email.  We don’t know anything about the song but could it have been by the same John Myers who was Secretary of the Dalton and District United Workmen’s Association, part of the Cumberland Miners’ Association?  Incidentally, trawling through local newspaper archives seems to be a good way of finding old songs, especially where things have been digitised.  Anyway, I hope that your recording goes well and we would be delighted to receive a copy once it hits the shops.

Best wishes.."

An excellent lead. Nick also points us towards his source.. "Lake Counties from 1830 to the Mid-twentieth Century: A Study in Regional Change" by J.D. Marshall and J.K. Walton, I've now got a copy, it's a good read although of the 17 local newspapers listed,  the one it doesn't mention is the Dalton News... Meanwhile I've set Mr Myers' words to a suitably austere dulcimer tune...here it is...just the tune...6 verses worth.

https://soundcloud.com/user-628037322/charade

And here on the right are  the words. Sing along why dont you? Watch this space for Mike's version.

In the meantime I'll keep digging through the Dalton News...next installment concerns the Slonk club, Hobble-de-hoys and ne'er do wells.