Editing Protest song (section)

==== 14th–19th century ====


English folk songs from the late medieval and early modern period reflect the social upheavals of their day. In 1944 the Marxist scholar [[A. L. Lloyd]] claimed that "[[The Cutty Wren]]" song constituted a coded anthem against feudal oppression and actually dated back to the [[English peasants' revolt of 1381]], making it the oldest extant European protest song.<ref>{{cite web|title=The Cutty Wren|url=http://unionsong.com/u080.html|access-date=October 3, 2007|publisher=Union Songs}} and [http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/tse1.htm ''The Singing Englishman'']</ref> He offered no evidence for his assertion, however and no trace of the song has been found before the 18th century.<ref>When pressed, Lloyd was said to have admitted later that he made it all up. See the discussion at [http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?ThreadID=47959 Mudcat Cafe] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110522081328/http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=47959 |date=May 22, 2011 }}. "Cutty" means small and the wren was a bird traditionally hunted in winter: "The Cutty Wren", in fact, has been reliably associated with the widespread 18th-century British folk Christmas alms-seeking rituals of mumming and [[wassailing]], which did involve a sanctioned reversal of social roles, and which, moreover, were sometimes accompanied by an air of suppressed menace, or led to open disorders, causing them to be regulated (masks were prohibited under Queen Elizabeth) or even banned at various times, as under Cromwell.</ref> Despite Lloyd's dubious claim about its origins, however, the "Cutty Wren" was revived and used as a protest song in the 1950s folk revival, an example of what may be considered a protest song. In contrast, the rhyme, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?", is attested as authentically originating in the 1381 Peasant Revolt, though no tune associated with it has survived.<ref>P. H. Freedman, ''Images of the Medieval Peasant'' (Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 60.</ref> Ballads celebrating social bandits like [[Robin Hood]], from the 14th century onwards, can be seen as expressions of a desire for social justice, though although social criticism is implied and there is no overt questioning of the status quo.<ref>G. Seal, ''The Outlaw Legend: A Cultural Tradition in Britain, America and Australia'' (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 19–31.</ref>

The era of civil and religious wars of the 17th century in Britain gave rise to the radical communistic millenarian [[Levellers]] and [[Diggers]]' movements and their associated ballads and hymns, as, for example, the "[[Diggers' Song]]".<ref>Noted by German Marxist theoretician [[Eduard Bernstein]] (1850–1932), in ''Cromwell & Communism: Socialism and Democracy in the Great English Revolution'', originally published in 1895, translated by [[H. J. Stenning]] (Routledge, 1963), pp. 111–2.</ref> with the incendiary verse:
<blockquote><poem>
But the Gentry must come down,
and the poor shall wear the crown.
Stand up now, Diggers all!</poem></blockquote>

The Digger movement was violently crushed, and so it is not surprising if few overt protest songs associated with it have survived. From roughly the same period, however, songs protesting wars and the human suffering they inflict abound, though such songs do not generally explicitly condemn the wars or the leaders who wage them. For example, "The Maunding Souldier" or "The Fruits of Warre is Beggery", framed as a begging appeal from a crippled soldier of the [[Thirty Years' War]].<ref>V. de Sola Pinto and Allan Edwin Rodway, ''The Common Muse: An Anthology of Popular British Ballad Poetry, XVth-XXth Century'' (Chatto & Windus, 1957), pp. 148–50.</ref> Such songs have been known, strictly speaking, as songs of complaint rather than of protest, since they offered no solution or hint of rebellion against the status quo.{{citation needed|reason=no evidence provided of fact or of rationale, which would make nearly every song on this page not a protest song|date=July 2016}}<ref>For the distinction between "songs of complaint and protest songs, see for example, Dick Weisman, ''Which Side Are You On: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America'' (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), pp. 36–37.</ref>

The advent of industrialization in the 18th and early 19th centuries was accompanied by a series of protest movements and a corresponding increase in the number of topical social protest songs and ballads. An important example is "The Triumph of General Ludd", which built a fictional persona for the alleged leader of the early 19th century anti-technological [[Luddite]] movement in the cloth industry of the north midlands, and which made explicit reference to the Robin Hood tradition.<ref>K. Binfield, ed., ''The Writings of the Luddites'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 98–100.</ref> A surprising English folk hero immortalized in song is [[Napoleon Bonaparte]], the military figure most often the subject of popular ballads, many of them treating him as the champion of the common working man in songs such as the "Bonny Bunch of Roses" and "Napoleon's Dream".<ref>V. Gammon, "The Grand Conversation: Napoleon and British Popular Balladry" ''Musical Traditions'', http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/boney.htm, retrieved February 19, 2009.</ref> As labour became more organized songs were used as anthems and propaganda, for miners with songs such as "The Black Leg Miner", and for factory workers with songs such as "The Factory Bell".<ref>J. Raven, ''The Urban & Industrial Songs of the Black Country and Birmingham'' (Michael Raven, 1977), pp. 52 and 61, and M. Vicinus, ''The Industrial Muse: A Study of Nineteenth Century British Working-class Literature'' (Taylor & Francis, 1974), p. 46.</ref>

These industrial protest songs were largely ignored during the first English folk revival of the later 19th and early 20th century, which had focused on songs that had been collected in rural areas where they were still being sung and on music education. They were revived in the 1960s and performed by figures such as [[A. L. Lloyd]] on his album ''The Iron Muse'' (1963).<ref>B. Sweers, ''Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music'' (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 32–3.</ref> In the 1980s the anarchist rock band [[Chumbawamba]] recorded several versions of traditional English protest songs as ''[[English Rebel Songs 1381–1914]]''.<ref>[http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/reviews/englishrebelsongs.shtml "Reviews"], BBC Radio 2, retrieved February 19, 2009.</ref>