Wicklow, Ireland. For over a hundred years there was no mining in the Glendasan valley until the St Kevin’s Lead and Zinc Mine was set up in 1948.

Pit Ponies of Glendasan by Jane Clarke
It only needs a tune to be a song.

Hitched to an eight-hour shift
in britchens, hames and traces,
they follow the miners’ carbide lights,

halt under hoppers, turn
on a thruppence and lean into their collars
to pull the five-wagon train.

Low-set cobs from the Curragh,
a piebald and two greys, their hooves
fall heavy as hammers on granite.

They haul lengths of larch for pit props,
pneumatic drills, boxes of gelignite,
and, from time to time, deliver

injured men back to daylight.
The miners pat their necks in passing
and feed them windfall apples –

comrades in toil and first to stall,
legs locked at a sudden rumbling, a change
in the air or the rush of running water.