Ed Foley was an Irish immigrant miner and minstrel working in Pennsylvania over a century ago. In 1892, he composed Celebrated Working Man, alternatively known as In The Bar Room. He wrote it after hearing a miner on his down-time in the bar brag that he could "cut more coal than any man from Pittsburgh to New York." Foley's song crossed the Atlantic with Yankee Jim Roberts of Kentucky and ended up - after being converted into local pitmatic dialect - in the coalfields of County Durham & Northumberland in North East England. For more details and original US lyrics a PDF file can be easily found online if you search for "Korson, George. 1927. Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miners".

I learnt this song from two sources: First, from an acapella version by the late great Jack Elliot of Birtley. He performs the song on a cassette put together by his friends and family to raise money for cancer research. Second, from Michael Dawney's canny little booklet called "Doon The Waggon Way: Mining Songs from the North of England". (The booklet has a vocabulary section at the back)

I bought both the tape and booklet in the 90s from Windows Music Shop in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The shop's online and, if you're dead keen, you could contact them to see how the tape or book could be located. Both probably deleted or out of print though. Jack's music can be found fairly easily online if you want to purchase it. Some songs have short samples that you can listen to for free.

I recorded the song and stuck it up on YouTube. I think there's five chords D G A Em and Bm, which you can follow on the video if you're learning the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOk-UBCk_zo
I also have another North East coal mining song on YouTube which I learnt using the same two sources. Jowl Jowl:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFjY1LnDqWo