"They looked rather little men, though not at all of fairy-size. The most remarkable thing about them was, that at any given moment they were all doing precisely the same thing, as if they had been a piece of machinery. When one drew the threads in stitching, they all did the same. If Colin saw one wax his thread, and looked up, he saw that they were all waxing their thread. If one took to hammering on his lapstone, they did not follow his example, but all together with him they caught up their lapstones and fell to hammering away, as if nothing but hammering could ever be demanded of them."
There's also a scene in a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle where his medical professor Dr. Bell (the original of Sherlock Holmes) deduces that a man is a cobbler from the mark on his corduroy breeches where the lapstone rests.
"Bating" is Scots or Irish for "beating", which is what you do on a lapstone. Although "Dick Darby" is frequently identified as an Irish ballad, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be Scots in origin. It has the sort of dourness I associate with a certain type of Scotsman.
Private information: my great grandfather was a Scottish shoemaker (a step up from a cobbler, I am told, which is what my great-great-grandfather was).