The People's Songbag

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31007, 12 March 1966, Page 12

The People's Songbag

Coalfields Blues

(Specially written /or "The Press” by DERRICK ROONEY.)

The songs of the English and Scottish coalfields, although they form a rich and varied tapestry, have been largely neglected by folk-lorists in favour of the less rugged ballads of rural Britain.

This may simply be because the coalfields ballads are less literary; or it may be by virtue of their earthy nature and lack of symbolism. But they ought not stay neglected, for some of them are fine, strong songs with an immediacy missing from the rural ballads. As might be expected, the best and most typical date from the last century when miners were struggling in appalling conditions for a fair wage and a better way of life.

lt’9 early >in the morning we rise at five o’clock. And the little slaves come to the door to knock, knock, knock. Come, my little washer lad.

come let's away. It's very hard to work for four pence a day.

The adult miner of the early 18th century earned more than fourpence a day—about seven shillings a week was probably the average—but he had to spend 17 or 18 hours a day in the deep pits to get it and, in Scotland at least, was bound to the pitowner in virtual slavery, by law “the property of their landlords, appurtenances to their estate, and transportable with them to any purchaser."

Small wonder the discontent ballads form the largest single body of coalfield songs. And in the protest songs of the last century no figure appears as frequently as the blackleg the non-union miner, the strike-breaker.

Ballads describe how unionists hunted blacklegs through the countryside tn strip them and black their faces with candle-grease and coal-dust; or booby-traps in the mines such as ropes slung neck-high to catch the blackleg as he hurtled past with his tubs. “The Blackleg Miners,” a song collected in Durham, tells of two such incidents:

Oh, Delaval is a terrible place They rub wet clay tn the blackleg'* face. And around the pit* they run a foot-race With the dirty blackleg miner*. Oh, don’t go near the Seahilt mine. For across the mainwav theu hang a line. To catch the throat and erack the *pine Of the dirty blaeklep miner.