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about

The Men I Call My Own

A woman tramps to the next job with the band of navvies for whom she has provided board during their last brutal labours, as she ran the shant — their lodgings — a grim turf hut, carved in to the side of the moor. Pride and despair mingle with defiance ... society needs these men, needs her ...
how can it be that they are pariahs?

Navvies — gangs of highly skilled manual labourers — built most of the original infrastructure of this country in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Accommodation was usually appalling: turf huts, wooden shacks, even empty tunnels — often run on the shant-system, where one person, usually an older woman, ran the hovel, cooked the food and sold the beer: a combination of mother to, and profiteer from, the bunch of men and, often paid, women who lived there, ‘in habits that civilised language will scarcely allow description of’ (Parliamentary Select Committee 1846).

lyrics

The Men I Call My Own Lyrics — Adam Summerhayes

I’ll take my choice, work where I will,
Beside this ditch or beyond that hill, With the men I call my own.

They build your roads and dam your streams,
Make substance of your wildest dreams,

For all your ideas need the shoulders of iron,
Of the men you slowly kill.

I’ll take my choice, work where I will,
Beside this ditch or beyond that hill,
With the men I call my own.

Our walls are of turf, we’re not worthy of stones;
Crowded men share their food and their groans.
The ale flows free at the end of the day,

And men spend what they will.

I’ll take my choice, work where I will,
Beside this ditch or beyond that hill,
With the men I call my own.

So you pay them, they pay me,

And it’s not the first time in history

That girls like us make the wheels go round,
Of the empires that you build.

I’ll take my choice, work where I will,
Beside this ditch or beyond that hill,
With the men I call my own.

They’re proud hard men, and they pay them well,
As they lay the tracks for the trains to hell,

But accidents happen and backs can break,

And with tears my eyes are filled.

I’ll take my choice, work where I will,
Beside this ditch or beyond that hill,
With the men I call my own.

They’re banned in the ale house and feared in the town,
You mock us and shun us but we’ll not back down,

For we’re building your country, of which you’re so proud,
So it’s wrong that you wish us ill.

On the tramp again over moorland or fen,

With no house and no home to call my own,
And the way goes on from one job to the next,
And the way goes on with these men or the next,
One step then another …

One road then another ...

And so my path goes on.

And so my path goes on.
I’ll take my choice, work where I will,
Beside this ditch or beyond that hill,
With the men I call my own.

credits

from The Devil's On The Mast, released June 2, 2023
Music by Adam Summerhayes, Murray Grainger and Kirsty Merryn

Produced and mixed by Murray Grainger.
Lyrics by Adam Summerhayes and Kirsty Merryn


UTE007 (Under The Eaves Records)
Mastered by Jon Astley
Artwork - Adam Summerhayes 
© & ℗ 2023 Adam Summerhayes, Murray Grainger & Kirsty Merryn


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The Ciderhouse Rebellion image

The Ciderhouse Rebellion England, UK

Two virtuoso musicians playing some of the most startling and original music you will ever encounter. Compelling, exciting and utterly original" Phil Beer

The duo brings together master accordionist Murray Grainger and fiddle player Adam Summerhayes. ... more

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