#TradSongTues 18th September - Everyday Songs

This is a series of posts about the #TradSongTues project, run by various people at the University of Sheffield. Every week I've been recording a song for the theme, sharing it and talking about it. Come and play on Twitter!

For this, I went with The Grinder's Hardship.

There's two versions of this song, but I learned this version through membership of the Sheffield Folk Chorale, though I couldn't find the exact words that we used so I cobbled it together based on the versions that are online to a different tune.

I think the line I love the most in that is "The strongest man amongst us is old at 32". Really shows off how dangerous it was being a grinder back in ye olde times. I know it was written for the Grinder's Society though, so maybe they were milking it (they probably weren't)

Apparently you can find this in a book of Joseph Mather songs. I probably could have picked a Mather song for this week but I'd have to write a tune and I've not been successful with that yet. I've had a book of them for about 2 years now.

I also pointed out that my song Catch the Tide fits the theme, and ruthlessly plugged that