as promised on another thread, here's a song from the set Ed Pickford wrote about the Arigna mines.
NB the mining area was centred on Arigna, but there were others in the Iron Mountains, on the far side of Lough Allen.

Jim McGourty was one miner who retired in 1989 after 50 years in various local mines (the chorus is a list of some of these)& his family are still in the Drumshanbo area- this is Ed's song as I recall it....

JIM McGOURTY RIP

War clouds covered Europe in the year of thirty-nine
When young Jim McGourty first went to the mine
Slievenakilla coalface, a wild bird in a cage
Five bob days and six day weeks and fourteen years of age.

chorus... Leyden's, Dernavoggy, Noone and Christie mine
Jim McGourty worked them all through fifty years of time
Fifty years of sweat and toil but now he's flying free
Remember Jim McGourty, McGourty RIP

The seam was fifteen inches, the road was five foot high
Jim took out the hutches*, but only the rich could buy,
Cut and drew the coal each day & cursed his aching back,
Threw the coal against the screens to separate the slack... chorus

Walking home in winter, mens' clothes would often freeze
But Jim was young and healthy- only old men wheeze
Soon he was a married man, with Florence for a wife
Kids to carry on his name and ease his working life.... chorus
his
When work was just a memory, out in the air and sun
Jim thought of his working life, fifty seasons long
Fifty years as man and boy, he dug Arigna's coal
Goodnight Jim McGourty, goodnight God rest your soul.... chorus
c. Ed Pickford            

* hutches- hand drawn wagons- no ponies in Arigna, but equivalent in Durham was the tub (Pony drawn mainly)   

this is as it is in my head just now & may not be what Ed wrote, but I don't think it's in print anywhere, so if you want to pursue it, you can contact him via his website. He never specified a tune to me, but I've found that a varant of the old Irish weepy 'A mother's love's a blssing' suits me.....