Bill Brown
Speed the Plough track 21
I learned Bill Brown - or more properly The Death of Poor Bill Brown - from Merry Mountain Child a 1981 LP of Ian Russell's recordings of Yorkshire singer Arthur Howard. He was born in Holmfirth in 1902, and learned this song from his father. The song is based on an actual incident. The following is from A.L. Lloyd's liner notes to the LP The Bitter and the Sweet by Roy Harris:
When the practice of enclosing common-land for the benefit of lofty landlords was stepped up in the 18th century, it caused hardship and fierce resentment over the broad acres. For some reason, resistance to this injustice was specially fierce in the triangle roughly bounded by Sheffield, Lincoln and Nottingham, and within this area for more than half a century there was virtual guerrilla was between poacher and keeper. The sullen bloodshot ballad of Bill Brown, who was shot dead at Brightside, near Sheffield, in 1769, is characteristic of the poacher broadsides that moved the disaffected villagers of the time (and for long after). The tune was noted in Lincolnshire by Frank Kidson's devoted informant, Mr Lolley, about eighty years ago.
(quotation taken from Reinhard Zierke's incredibly useful Mainly Norfolk site)
You can hear the song performed by another Yorkshire singer, Will Noble, who learned it directly from Arthur Howard, on the Yorkshire Garland Group website. That page also has further details on the history of the song, and the text of another broadside ballad telling the same story.
Nortumbrian smallpipes played by Liz Cooke.
You can hear a solo rendition of this song at A Folk Song A Week Week 275 – Death of Poor Bill Brown.