The Goose and the Common: An English Folk Song about Land Privatization
An English folk song about inequality and the enclosure of the commons, dating back to an 18th-century poem. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when a great deal more land was held in common for the benefit of the community. Public lands for hunting, pastoral needs, and agriculture were fundamental to how communities functioned. In England, beginning in the 12th century, but accelerated from the 16th century forward, land became privatized. This was a death by a thousand cuts: Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed. The same short-sighted philosophies that hastened the privatization of land in England were repeated on Native lands here in the U.S. by European colonizers. Suffice to say, we will not survive as a species unless we reverse this way of treating the planet and each other. Full stop.
Satirical print from 1830 depicting a goose lamenting the loss of the Commons to Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet, a Duke and King William IV.
I was inspired to learn this version of “The Goose and the Common” from a recording made by the Common Land Choir, produced as part of the current movement to protect Felton Common in North Somerset, England. If you like my version, you will LOVE theirs, beautifully produced and replete with beautiful harmonies. You can download the Common Land Choir’s “The Goose and the Common” here all proceeds go to the Save Felton Common campaign.
Lyrics:
They hang the man and flog the woman Who steals the goose off the common
But leave the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
CHORUS
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who takes things that are yours and mine (2x)
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This may be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the laws
CHORUS
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But geese will still a common lack
Until they go and steal it back
CHORUS
