Composed by the late Mike Canavan in 1973, the year the custom reportedly died out in Lancashire.  In the age before alarm clocks were mass produced and affordably available for the average working class, the local mills and factories would engage reliable persons who would go about in the morning to wake up the employees in the town for the morning shifts.  Most commonly seen was someone with a long wooden pole and a knob at the end, used to knock on second story windows, but there are pictured of people tossing pebbles or shooting the same through straws at the windows to wake those slumbering within.  This song has been a staple of Cliff’s for some years.

Jos. Morneault

Through cobbled streets so cold and damp
The Knocker-Upper man goes creeping
Tap-tapping at the window pane
To wake the town from sleeping.

chorus :
He said : “Hey thee up and stir theeself
The factory hooter’s blowin’
So get up from your nice warm bed
To work you must be goin’.”

Day in, day out, the year about
Though snow and rain are falling
You’d hear his clogs along the street
You’d hear his voice a-calling.

All the early-rising working folk
The Knocker-Upper’s call they heeded
But times go by, old customs die
Now he’s no longer needed.

Through streets of quiet suburbia
The Knocker-Upper’s ghost goes creeping
Now listening to the ringing sound
That wakes the town from sleeping.