The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #15916   Message #145245
Posted By: John in Brisbane
05-Dec-99 - 10:54 PM
Thread Name: Lyr/Tune Add: Cambrian Colliery Disaster (Seeger)
Subject: Lyr/Tune Add: CAMBRIAN COLLIERY DISASTER (Seeger)
I don't know the background to this song penned by Peggy Seeger, presumably related to a real event. I will post the tune to MUDI in the next coupladays. Regards, John

Thirty-one voices cried out in the darkness
Thirty-one lamps blew out in the gale;
Thirty-one check discs hang yet in the lamp room:
Thirty-one miners lie low in the vale.

Never did gas ever come to Cambrian
Never was gas ever know to prevail;
But one Monday morning it came without warning
And left thirty-one miners dead in the vale.

No warning to the men below at the coalface,
No warning to the women above in the town;
No warning, no warning, but weeping and mourning,
For thirty-one miners dead underground.

Fathers and sons, husbands and brothers
Swept from the face in a fiery wave,
A vision of hell, then death come a- raging
And laid thirty-one miners low in the grave.

Silence; the pit, the dust and the darkness,
Silent the women and children above.
Silence in Clydach, for hope is abandoned,
Thirty-one comrades will never come up.