From the recording Better Late Than Never

Another song co-written with Philippa Atkin. In the mid to late 18th century David Hartley led the Cragg Vale Coiners. They would borrow gold coins clip them and give you back more than you started off with. There’s plenty of information about them online.

Lyrics

I was born in this valley, my heart's in this Cragg
Raised up from the earth by the men of the stag
High up on the moors where the ling kisses sky
Where the Hartleys of Bell House do live, love and die
From Black Brook to Blackstone through Turvin and Royd
On land and on looms were our good men employed
The times they were hard and the pickings were lean
No food to be had and no living to glean

So I must be exiled, away I shall roam
To the smelting of iron, far off from my home
By the Black Country fires I grew hard and grew strong
There's no man to touch me, or dare do me wrong
With a wife at my heels and with coin from my sweat
Home I am come now to call in the debt
To stand against men that would raise up the mills
Which'll gobble the children from out these hills

So we'll clip and we'll crop the good coin of this land
'Til shavings of gold flood out hot through my hands
There'll be no hungry lasses, nor lads wi'out shoes
Sod the lawman, we'll take what we're due
David Hartley am I, and I am their king
It's my rule they'll follow and my name they'll sing
It's me they'll remember, I'll pay with my soul
When they stretch out my neck on that high gallows pole

I'll forge my own path, with the alchemist's skill
And utter the gold through the force of my will
They'll hear of us coiners with dread and with awe
This is our kingdom and my way is law
Then Broadbent the bastard, did see his king sold
To excise man Dighton, for his promise of gold
So Crag men must tremble, blood cold in their veins
While their King David Hartley lies rotting in chains

Vengeance is coming to them that done wrong
From hell or from prison, this King's reach is long
One hundred guineas for that excise man's head
In Bull close they shot him and trampled him dead
Now judgement is cometh and I am to die
With noose at York Tyburn, they'll hang me up high
And coiners they'll string up atop Beacon Hill
B'ware ye their ghosts, they are swinging there still

We'll clip and we'll crop the good coin of this land
'Til shavings of gold flood out hot through my hands
There'll be no hungry lasses, nor lads wi'out shoes
Sod the lawman, we'll take what we're due
David Hartley am I, and I am their king
It's my rule they'll follow and my name they'll sing
It's me they'll remember, I'll pay with my soul
When they stretch out my neck on that high gallows pole

I was born in this valley, my heart's in this Cragg
Raised up from the earth by the men of the stag
High up on the moors where the ling kisses sky
Where the Hartleys of Bell House do live, love and die