And some more from Bill Reese:
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Just a bit more from the book's author;

John C. O'Donnell wrote:
Dear Ken,

Looking back through some of my notes, I note that Geoff Drake had heard the song Billy the Pit Horse when he was visiting Idris Griffith's son Elwyn. Geoff had returned to his native Wales for a visit, and (as he described it) he and Elwyn were having a 'jam session' playing guitar and singing songs that they knew. They were singing the "Travis" song (Dark As A Dungeon) when Elwyn's dad, Idris, walked into the room and asked: "Where did you get the new words?"

Idris told him that he learned Billy, the Pit Horse, sung to the same melody, from one of his fellow workers at the Arael Colliery in Abertillery (Geoff's home town). Geoff went on to say that In Britain there is a suspicion that Travis "borrowed" a traditional tune. Idris indicated that the 'old man' he had learned it from had always sung it to that tune.

Bill Reese
Moch Pryderi
Celtic Music of Wales
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"The Arael Colliery" was the Arael Griffin Colliery; it was sunk in 1863 in the village of Six Bells, near Abertillery (which was named after The Six Bells pub.) The pit was mothballed in 1930 because of The Depression, and was taken over in 1936 by Thomas Paton, who owned it until Nationalisation in 1947. On June 28, 1960, a firedamp explosion killed 45 miners in the Six Bells Disaster; and a giant 66ft statue of a miner was created by Sebastien Boyesen, named 'The Guardian Of The Valleys', commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Six Bells explosion on June 28, 2010.

In the 1970s, the Six Bells colliery was amalgamated with the Marine colliery at Cwm, near Ebbw Vale, in the National Coal Board's drive to create superpits. All the coal won at the Marine and Six Bells collieries was wound up the Marine shafts. The combined Marine/Six Bells collieries closed by British Coal in 1988.

Mick Tems