I first heard and enjoyed Poverty Knock sometime in the early 1980's on Wally Whyton's Forces Folk programme in Germany. Having recently (August 2014) set up camp in Sheffield this song seems perfect to extend my repertoire of Yorkshire songs. The version I use is taken from A.L. Lloyd's Folk Song in England wherein Lloyd writes :
... "Poverty Knock", recorded by A.E. Green in 1965 from an old Batley weaver, Tom Daniel, who had learnt the song some sixty years previously, at the first mill he worked in on leaving school. The old Dobbie loom, one of the early mechanical models for plain weaving, as it worked seemed to make the sound of 'poverty knock'! Hence the refrain in the song.
This being a weaving song there are of course Lancashire claims to its origin.

Lyrics