Lyr Req: slate miner (Dark as a dungeon)

Subject: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: adrmike
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 04:38 PM

I only have 3 phrases of a song I've been looking for:

- the morning, the evening, to the miner its the same

- the demons of the deep are always . . .

- one fall of the slate and you're buried alive

Can anyone help fill in the rest?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 05:08 PM

Dark as the Dungeon

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:06 PM

Slate mining and coal mining are different things, Guest. Lot's of songs about coal mining -- haven't run into one about slate.

adrmike -- song about the slate mining of Wales?

I'd be interested in it, too, if you get any more information. Hope someone comes up with it.

Linn

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: Jeri
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:12 PM

The song IS Dark as a Dungeon:

The midnight, the morning, the breaking of day
Are the same to the miner who labors away.
Where the demons of death often come by surprise,
One slip of the slate and you're buried alive.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:51 PM

Bat Goddess, when coal miners dig out an underground seam, the roof rock is left above them. It often is shaly slate (or sIate in anthracite areas) which is often weak, hardly like the hard slates used in building). It is deadly if it collapses on the miners as they mine deeper along the seam.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:57 PM

The song is in the DT, but search with dungeon- dark as a dungeon doesn't work, as we found out in an earlier thread.

?Why?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: GUEST,Billy
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 11:31 PM

In Scotland, there was plenty of slate near the surface to quarry it. I don't recall hearing of any slate mines.
I understand they recently reopened one of the quarries to get slate for some of the older listed buildings in Edinburgh. The building department vetoed the use of cheap slate from the continent that you could shoot peas through!
Billy (Son of a slater who made me carry tons of the stuff up ladders in a hod when I was a youth).

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: Jeri
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 11:45 PM

Q, I just messed around with it. 'dungeon' works, but 'dark as a dungeon' doesn't. Scratched my head for a while, looked at the song, and realised it doesn't work because it's 'dark as THE dungeon'. (I always thought it was 'a' too.)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: Jeri
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 11:48 PM

Oh yeah - (in case I'm being confusing) when I said the name, I was agreeing it was the song GUEST linked to, not trying to say the name was different. In any case, GUEST got that right, too.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 09:54 AM

I think the DT is wrong in this case. DARK AS THE DUNGEON should be DARK AS A DUNGEON.

allmusic lists 98 recordings called DARK AS A DUNGEON (including those by Merle Travis) and only 2 called DARK AS THE DUNGEON, both by Johnny Cash. (But even Johnny Cash is inconsistent; he has also recorded it as DARK AS A DUNGEON.)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner (Dark as a dungeon)
From: RWJ
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 05:45 AM

Blaenau Ffestiniog has at least 2 slate mines open to the public .Tanygrisiau the next vilage has mine with a 40% aprox incline down about 5 levels before hiting water , large galleries off each side of the incline ,
. The latst i heard it was still being worked by one man but the was some time back .

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: slate miner (Dark as a dungeon)
From: GUEST,Anne Croucher
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 05:38 AM

I am sure the words were not so clunky when I sang this down caves in the Mendip hills in '69 and '70.

The repetition of young in the first line, form as a habit? A man must have lust? Demons of death often come by surprise? It has no poetry in it.

I have written this into my book but I think that I will get the Tippex and do some serious folk processing.

Come all you young fellows so strong and so fine
Don't play dice with your future in the dark dreary mine

Hey - I like that!! I did think 'so fit and so fine', but that is rather too modern I think.

Anne