Thanks so much!!

My computer is quite elderly and a bit unpredictable, so I have a lot of problems searching for anything. Many times I can't even access Mudcat - as tonight - and had to ask a friend in another state to forward your replies.

Thanks to you all for the responses. I should have enough suggestions to hold me for a day or two.

Spaw: I had forgotten about the Jean Ritchie tune (creeping senility). In the 1950s, the farm next to ours in Arkansas was strip-mined and it drained our water well.

I found the words to "Down In A Coal Mine" in a vanity press local history collection and suspected that while the tune was credited to an miner, it likely had much earlier origins. The "author" quoted was born in Wales in the 1870s. It is probable that he sang the tune and listeners just assumed he wrote it.

Thank you, MMario, Dick, Keith, and Malcolm Douglas - and thanks a million, Kara, for the lyrics. The Mudcat Cafe is a treasure, but not half-so as its patrons.

Giac