A LANCASHIRE DOXOLOGY.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN.”

“Some cotton has lately been imported into Farrington (sic) Farington, where the mills have been closed for a considerable time. The people, who were previously in the deepest distress, went out to meet the cotton: the women wept over the bales and kissed them: and finally sang the Doxology over them.”
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,”
Praise Him who sendeth joy and woe.
The Lord who takes – the Lord who gives,
O praise Him, all that dies, and lives.
He opens and He shuts his hand,
But why, we cannot understand:
Pours and dries up his mercies’ flood,
And yet is still All-perfect Good.
We fathom not the mighty plan,
The mystery of God and man;
We women, when afflictions come,
We only suffer and are dumb.
And when, the tempest passing by,
He gleams out, sunlike, through our sky,
We look up, and through black clouds riven,
We recognise the smile of Heaven.
Ours is no wisdom of the wise,
We have no deep philosophies;
Childlike we take both kiss and rod,
For he that loveth knoweth God.
Good Words, for July.

Title:A Lancashire Doxology

Author:unknown

Publication:The Bolton Chronicle

Published in:Bolton

Date:July 2nd 1864

Keywords:cotton, gender, poverty, religion

Commentary

Though not named here, this poem was by a ‘Miss Muloch’, as noted when the piece was republished in the pages of the Confederate newspaper the Charleston Mercury on October 9th of the same year. The poem relates celebrations as some cotton arrives in the small Lancashire village of Far[r]ington in order to feed the mill and provide work for the local population, and its transatlantic republication gives an indication of how closely the situation in Britain’s industrial heartland was being observed by Americans with a stake in the export of cotton product. It may even be that the cotton that arrived in that particular part of central Lancashire had gotten through the blockade; in any case, the Confederate republication seems to hint at this. A ‘doxology is a liturgical praise to God. – SR