Blood and bone

[jhetley]

The Ballad of Springhill

Peggy Seeger/Ewan MacColl

In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia
Down in the dark of the Cumberland Mine
When the earth gets restless, miners die
Blood and bone is the price of coal,
Blood and bone is the price of coal

Down at the coal face the miners working
Rattle of the belt and the cutters blade
Rumble of rock and the walls close round
The living and the dead men two miles down
The living and the dead men two miles down

Twelve men lie two miles from the pit shaft
Twelve men lie in the dark and sang
Long hot days in the miner's tomb
Three feet high and a hundred long,
three feet high and a hundred long

Eight days passed and the lamps gave out
One of the miners ups and says
"There's no more water or light or bread,
so we'll live on songs and hope instead,
we'll live on songs and hope instead".

Eight long days and some were rescued,
Leaving the dead to lie alone.
Through all their lives they dug their grave
Two miles of earth for a marking stone,
Two miles of earth for a marking stone.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[pernishus.livejournal.com]

Needless to say, much sympathy felt throughout Nova Scotia. My great grandfather was killed in a mine collapse in Pennsylvania in the early 1920s -- we don't even have a picture of him, alas -- all those were lost in a house fire shortly thereafter.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That.

On a slight tangent... I hadn't noticed before that this was an Ewan MacColl song, but it doesn't surprise me. I bought one of his albums once, and couldn't listen to it all the way thru. Relentlessly ose!

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I'm not 100% sure of that attribution. I found it on the net -- can't lay hands on the proper songbook and wonder if it ended up sold with Mom's junk...anyway, I seem to remember a couple more verses.

"Folks in Springhill don't rest easy..."

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

I found it on iTunes, performed by someone named Lex Romaine (the album, titled Diggin' Dusty Diamonds, appears to be entirely coal-mining songs). There are indeed three or four more verses in that version, with the first verse in the lyrics you found divided between the first and second verses in his. It's tough to understand some of the words, though (one disadvantage of iTunes -- no lyric sheet).

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

Ah... yet another example of me coming from the completely opposite musical direction, not having grown up with folk music. I didn't know this song, but as it turned out (after an iTunes search) I did know the melody -- from "Memorial" on Minus Ten and Counting (consulting which confirms Ewan MacColl's involvement in the original).