The Buffer Girls Song is one of three songs that I found at Yorkshire Garland to beef up my repertoire of Yorkshire songs. The other two are Sheffield Park and My Bonny Yorkshire Lass,
As explained under the Lyrics tab above, this is a contemporary song about the very young children who worked as buffer girls in Sheffield's Cutlery Industry. It was written and composed for the Oughtibridge Primary School by Robin Garside in 2012 to be performed at the East Peak Industrial Folk Arts Schools Project in the same year.
The song itself expresses the girls' aspirations of a better life and being able to go school instead of having to work so hard.
The buffer girls wore a red and white costume the colours of which are honoured by Sheffield United, one of the city's two prominent soccer teams.
The 1919 portrait, pictured above, of two such girls by William Rothenstein (1872-1945) is on display in the Sheffield Museum.

Lyrics