Just lumping together the known Aberfan songs

http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=17791#2748121

GREY OCTOBER
(Peggy Seeger & Jack Warshaw)
Grey October in Glamorgan
High pitheaps where the houses stand
Fog in the valley, backshift ending
Children awaken in Aberfan

Warm October in Thi Binh Province
Huts of bamboo and rattan
Sun comes up - repair gangs stop
And children waken in Thuy Dan

Pithead hooter sounds from Merthyr
Load the coal in the waiting trams
Shoot the slag down the high pitheap
While children eat in Aberfan

Ox carts rattle down Thi Binh Highway
Work begins on the broken land
Night's work ended, the roadway's mended
Children eat in Thuy Dan

Dai Dan Evans grabs his satchel
Michael Jones his bread and jam
Five to nine and the school bell ringing
Time for school in Aberfan

School bell ringing, children running
Down by the river and across the dam
Hot sun burning, time for learning
Time for school in Thuy Dan

Lessons started in Pantglas Junior
Through the fog a black wave ran
Under the weight of the man-made mountain
Children die in Aberfan

Lessons start in the Thi Binh schoolhouse
And another day began
Bombers fly in the morning sky
And children die in Thuy Dan

Tears are shed for Glamorgan children
And the world mourns Aberfan
But who will weep for the murdered children
Under the rubble of Thuy Dan?

Grey October in Glamorgan
Warm October in Vietnam
Where children die while we stand by
And shake the killer by the hand.


PALACES OF GOLD by Leon Rosseleson

If the sons of company directors,
And judges' private daughters,
Had to got to school in a slum school,
Dumped by some joker in a damp back alley,
Had to herd into classrooms cramped with worry,
With a view onto slagheaps and stagnant pools,
Had to file through corridors grey with age,
And play in a crackpot concrete cage.

Chorus (after each verse):
Buttons would be pressed,
Rules would be broken.
Strings would be pulled
And magic words spoken.
Invisible fingers would mould
Palaces of gold.
If prime ministers and advertising executives,
Royal personages and bank managers' wives
Had to live out their lives in dank rooms,
Blinded by smoke and the foul air of sewers.
Rot on the walls and rats in the cellars,
In rows of dumb houses like mouldering tombs.
Had to bring up their children and watch them grow
In a wasteland of dead streets where nothing will grow.

I'm not suggesting any kind of a plot,
Everyone knows there's not,
But you unborn millions might like to be warned
That if you don't want to be buried alive by slagheaps,
Pit-falls and damp walls and rat-traps and dead streets,
Arrange to be democratically born
The son of a company director
Or a judge's fine and private daughter.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RNpKmNFoRY


THE ABERFAN COAL TIP TRAGEDY BY Thom Parrott

The mining men of Wales are hardy, strong and bold,
And they tunnel in the earth and make it yield its coal.
But in the town of Aberfan, it's dearer now than gold,
For one generation, for the black rock, has been sold.
Chorus:
How many died in Aberfan
When the coal tip came rumbling down?
How many children will never grow old?
How many lives purchase how many pounds of coal?

The little school of Pantglas* lay where the mountain loomed,
And some two hundred children took their lessons in its rooms.
The day fall recess was to begin, they went to meet their doom,
Not knowing "the green hollow" would soon become their tomb.
Chorus.

It was just 9:00 AM when they opened up the door,
And in came the children, two hundred, maybe more,
For nobody knew what the mountain had in store.
The lucky ones were tardy, the others are no more.
Chorus.

"I played with my big dog, I played with my cat."
Signed "Paul, October 21." There's nothing after that.
For the mountain came down, and everyone was trapped,
And now there's only coal slag where little Paul once sat.
Chorus.

In eighteen hundred and seventy-four, the first pit shaft went down,
And they started piling mining waste on the slopes above the town.
Everybody knew that the practice was unsound
But for ninety-two years no better place was found.

The men of the National Coal Board said that they'd known from the first.
The coal tips they permitted were a worry and a curse.
But I've heard that kind of thing so many times and it always sounds rehearsed.
If the coal tip was a murderer, the Coal Board's crime was worse.

For the children all were pretty, the children all were fine,
But the children went to school in the shadow of the mine.
With the coal tip up above them, they were running out of time,
And they were buried alive by the Ministry of Mine.

How many died in Aberfan
When the coal tip came tumbling down.
How many children will never grow old.
How many lives purchase how many tons of coal.


ABERFAN -- Bernie Fairlamb (ref Leadfingers)

Am                           G
Black is the life of a mining man,
                      Am                     Em
In the bowels of the earth with a pick and a lamp
               Am             C
Black is the life of a mining man
                   G            Am
And Black is the memory of Aberfan


That Friday morning in a little Welsh town
A man made mountain came tumbling down
It came down the hillside like a giant black hand
And plucked all the children from Aberfan

In the little brick schoolhouse children laughed sang and played
When down came that mountain that mining men made
More than a hundred lives lost before they began
A lost generation in Aberfan

A heartbroken Mother stood watching in dread
As men brought out children all broken and dead
She'd stood at the PitHead to weep for her man
Now gone two of her children in Aberfan

The graves on the hillside stretch over the town
That a man made mountain brought to world renown
They stretch out as far as the eye can scan
There lie the children of Aberfan

So come all you miners who cut the rough coal
Dont take the life of another young soul
Bury your waste as deep as you can
Lest you bury your children like Aberfan


Robin Jones wrote a song about Aberfan, slightly amended by Lol Lynch in the "Wench All," version, see notes below.

ABERFAN by Robin Jones

"So much is given in money and toys.
In tears they spade away the spoils,
but they don't bring me back again,
to sunshine, and to Aberfan

And I was only a litle girl:
one of three hundred in the school
Who chalked and chanted, skipped and ran
in sunshine and in Aberfan

There's some who lived and many who died,
when the colliery slag began to slide.
The sunless, coal-black slurry ran.
Two hundred buried in Aberfan

Lend me my toys, and let me play
Above the earth for another day.
Let me see my school friends once again
and say 'Goodbye' to Aberfan."

Recorded by local Lancashire groups "Brillig," on a tape of the same name 22 years ago, and "Wench All" in 2003 on a CD "Ne'er a Penny 'o Money."


I (Dave Collins) wrote this song about Aberfan some time ago. If anyone is interested, email me and I will send you the melody and guitar chords.

He was lying
In a frozen world of rock and stone;
Death defying,
Through a hundred million years alone.
Dreaming how he would rise,
Once more to fill the skies;
He was giant.
What were centuries to him?

Soft now the giant sleeps.
Soft in the mountain deep.
Far from the children of the mining man;
Far from the village they call Aberfan.

Then they woke him,
Where he slumbered in his ancient pride.
And they broke him;
Threw him out upon the mountainside.
What would he do but wait;
Nursing his grief and hate?
He would show them
Not to lay their hands on him.

Soft now the giant crawls;
Soft while the dark rain falls.
Woe to the children of the mining man,
When the black giant comes to Aberfan.

They were praying,
As they would on any normal day.
They were saying,
"Gentle Jesus look on us we pray".
Was no-one listening in?
Or were they too steeped in sin?
Can't you save them?
Don't you see the giant comes?

Loud now the giant roars,
In through the schoolhouse doors.
Where are the children of the mining man?
Lost in the village they call Aberfan.




ABERFAN by Dave Ackles

It was rainy in the morning as the men left for the mine,
Past the schoolyard in the morning.
At the colliery production charts read, 'Men, we're doing fine,'
As the rain fell in the morning.
The coal board said you're number seven tip will stay in line,
It's been two years this morning.
But no one told the children of Aberfan.
One hundred and sixteen caps and shawls
Danced the halls of the school-house,
While the grown-up inspectors drank their tea
In the safe, dry lee of the tool-house.
As the rain fell in the morning on Aberfan.
Did no one hear the stones move when the tip began to fall?
Did no one feel the slag shake? Was no one there at all?
They were on the phone for Swansea taking orders for more,
They were going about their business, minding the store,
And five minutes later, they were asking, 'What for?'
The call for silence hushed the crowd,
Who searched the clouds for answers.
While they listened for life and held their breath,
The sound of death held the dancers.
As the rain fell in the morning on Aberfan.
But no one told the children, but no one told the children.
And it's always the children.
"Aberfan" is a song by David Ackles. It is track #8 from the album Five & Dime that was released in 1973. The duration of this song is 04:10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZrLujw46uQ



Just thought I'd add the lyrics to a Great Song I heard by Kyle Aughe /Dulahan from the CD "Not against my own".

Aberfan

'Twas the twenty-first of October, on a foggy Friday morn
And the children sang things beautiful and bright
Their fathers dug the coal beneath the mountainside above
And grew the tip that shattered all their lives

For years the townsfolk worried of the spring beneath Merthr Vale
Could it someday bring the slag upon the town?
And on that fateful morning in the mining south of Wales
Five hundred thousand tons came raining down

CHORUS: On Aberfan, a hundred sixteen children, Aberfan
So cruel a fate to will them
There'll be no consolation for the coal board's washed their hands
Of the blood of those young children in the town
Of Aberfan

They heard a distant rumble and it soon became a roar
So quickly that they had no time to flee
The parents and the miners dug frantically in vain
Through tears that made it difficult to see

The crown and her tribunal and the coal board had their say
Empty words that fell on deafened ears
New rules and regulations are not the prime concern
When you're burying a child of seven years. CHORUS

Since that day my father's never mined an ounce of coal
For he lost a son and daughter in the slide
He sees my brother James and sister Margaret in my eyes
The torment and the grief will not subside

Most days the memory lingers sometimes it starts to fade
Till you see the hollow faces in a crowd
And it brings back the resignation; 'twill never go away
A generation lost beneath a shroud. CHORUS

http://www.dulahan.com/?page_id=437

bradfordian