Jute Mill Song

Today's song is The Jute Mill Song, a Scottish piece from the Industrial Revolution, written by the socialist agitator Mary Brookbank. Brookbank, a communist activist, was a jute mill worker herself. At the time she wrote the song, Dundee was the jute capital of Europe- indeed, of the world.

Women and girls working at a Dundee Jute Mill

The first jute mill was built in Dundee around the 1830s when it was discovered that whale oil from the city's whaling industry could be used to make the spinning of the Indian fiber possible. Employing rural migrants, the Jute Barons made Scotland the gateway to the European jute market during the 19th and early 20th centuries, with over 130 mills employing 40.3% of Dundee's workers in 1911- 75% of those workers being women, many of them married. Brookbank described the experiences of these women in writing as well as song. To quote,

"The life of the women workers of Dundee right up to the thirties was ... a living hell of hard work and poverty. It was a common sight to see women, after a long ten-hour-day in the mill, running to the stream wash-houses with the family washing. They worked up to the last few days before having their bairns. Often they would call in at the calenders from their work and carry home bundles of sacks to sew. These were paid for at the rate of 5 pence for 25, 6 pence for a coarser type of sack. Infant and maternal mortality in Dundee was the highest in the country."

Women working in a Bangladesh jute mill

The days of Dundee as the center of the world's jute industry were not to last forever. The conquest of South Asia during the 19th century allowed the investors to move operations to the cheaper labor of colonial Bangladesh, and by 1914 these investments had paid off in cheap imported jute, leading to the industry's decline from Dundee after the First World War. Dundee fell into economic depression until new industries located there after World War Two. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh continue to lead the world in jute exports today.


I've chosen two versions of the song to represent the song. Karan Casey's arrangement is finely sung, with instrumentation, though it is somewhat faster than the typical arrangement. 

The lyrics of the song are as follows:

O, dear me, the mill is running fast
And we poor shifters canna get nae rest
Shifting bobbins coarse and fine
They fairly make you work for your ten and nine

O, dear me, I wish this day were done
Running up and doon the Pass is nae fun
Shiftin', piecin', spinning warp, weft and twine
To feed and clothe ma bairnie offa ten and nine

O, dear me, the world is ill-divided
Them that works the hardest are the least provided
But I maun bide contented, dark days or fine
There's no much pleasure living offa ten and nine

 I've also included Tony Archibald's version, which is closer to the tempo the song is typically sung at. Another great example is Frances Carlin's recording, as well as Ewan McLennan's. 

 

I recently made my own recording of the song. This version is in English, rather than Scots, and played in standard tuning on Capo 3 and played on the C, F and G7 chords, fingerpicking in the middle four strings (which, of course, makes the G7 interchangeable with a G, the high E not being played).

One of the aspects of this song that I enjoy is that, while it is a clearly political song written by a political author for political purposes, the lyrics do not explicitly become social criticism until the last verse. Instead, it lays out in plain terms the experiences, feelings, and frustrations of the mill worker. Instead of starting from a grand and abstract view of the whole of society, it starts from a humanizing, personal perspective, and builds from there. This is a very powerful technique in writing political songs, as seen in such examples as Plane Wreck at Los Gatos, the Ballad of Joe McDonnel, or Paradise. The Jute Mill Song is one of the best examples of it- when it does finally reach its political message, it does so only briefly, but plainly. Instead of becoming excessively blatant and pontificating
on its point, the song first invites the listener into empathizing with the mill workers and their experiences, then reaches its broader conclusions as a natural extension of those experiences.