For the record, here are the lyrics, which are somewhat hidden in a thread of a different title. I added corrections to what had been posted in the other thread. Where'd you find a tune, Kat?
-Joe Offer-

---

The Miner's Song
(Bill Staines, 1985)

When first unto this country a stranger I came,
A pick and shovel on my back, No money to my name,
No money to my name.

I landed in old Juneau, Seattle far behind,
I boated 'cross the channel
Where I worked the Treadwell mine,
I worked the Treadwell mine.

Well, it was hard times in the open pit, eighteen hundred down
One day you'd make two dollars and the next you're glory bound,
The next you're glory bound.

So I dodged the rocks from the sudden slides and I swam out of the flood,
In the rain and cold we dug for gold through the water and the mud,
Through the water and the mud.

There's color in the eagle's eye, and in the sun at the break of day,
But there ain't no color I could find to keep me on that pay,
To keep me on that pay.

So it was straight way through the wilderness to Fairbanks up the line,
And down the frozen Yukon in the year of ninety-nine,
The year of ninety-nine.

Now there's twenty thousand of us here out on the beach at Nome,
And there ain't but one in fifty who can pay his way back home,
Pay his way back home.

God find the snow-blind trapper and help him on his way,
God bless the drunken fiddler when he finds the time to play,
And hear the words of the dying man left frozen in the cold,
And pity the weary miner who's never found his gold,
Who never found his gold.

Well, I wish I were in Portland or some other seacoast town,
I'd sail around this whole wide world and lay this cradle down,
Lay this cradle down.

Click to play