This was one of the first songs that I wrote, as an entry for an EFDSS song-writing competition, judged by Bert Lloyd. I didn't win! I had seen a letter in the Rougemont Museum in Exeter describing the life of a Honiton Lace-worker and wrote this song based on it. The tune is a version of ‘The Handsome Cabin Boy’.

 

My name is Becky Tidwell and I've passed twice thirty years

I crave a little of your time to tell of my hopes and fears

I am a single lady and I think it no disgrace

For my life's been spent in honest toil a' working the Honiton Lace

A cottage near to Axminster is the place that I call home.

My father left it to me and it's the one thing that I own

I rise each morning at the dawn when the Sun first shows his face

For that is when the light is best for working the Honiton Lace

At nine o' clock I go down to the shop and I take my work

My friends are gathered there and we can spend some time in talk

We get paid off in tokens we can use just in that place

And their value is but fivepence for a day at the Honiton Lace

Then Mr Gross he gives to me a pattern for to do

Sometimes there is a harder piece that must be done by two

So me and Bridget Harvey we sit in her window case

And we spend a pleasant day at talking and working the Honiton Lace

Now once there was a young man who spoke kindly unto me

But he became a soldier and he was lost in the Crimea

He was my only suitor and no-one has took his place

And never for myself I'll work a veil of the Honiton Lace

But sometimes as the night draws on I let my bobbins fall

And I think the piece I'm working on some lady at a ball

So all you London ladies whose fine clothes our work does grace

Just think of those West-Country women who dressed you in your fine Honiton Lace

 

 

Copyright © 1971 Martin Graebe