THE DYING SPRAGGER
(Anon)

A handsome young spragger lay dying
With a miner supporting his head
When he raised himself up on his elbow
And then to his workmates he said

Wrap me up with my pit lamp and tallow
And stow my poor body below
Where the ? and the blowflies can’t find me
In some dark and cool tunnel below

Take my old crib can and bottle
Place one at my head and my toe
Then scratch out my name at the pay box
And tell them I’m sleeping below

There’s some tea in the black dixie ? tin
Line your dip tins up in a row
And let’s drink to our next joyful meeting
In the sky where all good workers go

I can hear the big wheel on the popper
And the cage as it moves down the toe
For it sounds the death knell of a spragger
Goodbye my good friends I must go

Pay the piper to pipe me a solo
Ask the union to sing me a song
Have the priests ring out the old church bell
So the whole town will know that I’m gone

Oh if I had the wings of a bell bird
Right over the town I would fly
And I’d fly to the home of my loved ones
But alas, my dear cobbers, I die

Wrap me up with my pit lamp and tallow
And stow my poor body below
Where the ? and the blowflies can’t find me
In some dark and cool tunnel below

This coal mining parody of 'The Dying Stockman' is from Alan Musgrove and His Watsaname Band's 'Behind the Times' CD - no label or number but available via Trad&Now. A beaut album.

There is no lyric booklet with the CD - the above transcription is mine. I was unable to decipher the insect (or whatever) accompanying blowflies in the third line of the repeated stanza. It sounds like 'pie-whys'. There is a piwi gene in some insects, but I doubt that is it. I also couldn't make sense of the reference to a dixie mess tin because it sounds like 'black dixie fountain'. I hope someone can supply the correct words.

Note by Alan Musgrove:

It was learnt from the singing of Bill Crossdale who in turn learnt it from Jack Marsden, a miner at Bellbird Colliery in the Hunter Valley of NSW. In coal mining parlance a spragger is a worker who stops coal skips by inserting a piece of timber (a sprig) between the wheel spokes as the skips have no braking system of their own.

--Stewie.