The Lousy Miner.
[AIR—Dark-eyed Sailor.]

It's four long years since I reached this land,
In search of gold among the rocks and sand;
And yet I'm poor when the truth is told,
I'm a lousy miner,
I'm a lousy miner in search of shining gold.

I've lived on swine 'till I grunt and squeal,
No one can tell how my bowels feel,
With slapjacks swimming round in bacon grease,
I'm a lousy miner,
I'm a lousy miner; when will my troubles cease?

I was covered with lice coming on the boat,
I threw away my fancy swallow-tailed coat,
And now they crawl up and down my back,
I'm a lousy miner,
I'm a lousy miner, a pile is all I lack.

My sweetheart vowed she'd wait for me
'Till I returned; but don't you see'
She's married now, sure, so I am told,
Left her lousy miner,
Left her lousy miner, in search of shining gold.

Oh, land of gold, you did me deceive,
And I intend in thee my bones to leave;
So farewell, home, now my friends grow cold,
I'm a lousy miner,
I'm a lousy miner in search of shining gold

Put's Original California Songster, p. 48

Lyrics and tune in Dwyer & Lingenfelter, The Songs of the Gold Rush, p. 155

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Frugal Housewife— "Oh, Mr. Stickins, I see by the daily paper that meat has fallen two cents per pound, and I think you ought to make some reduction in your charges."
Butcher— "Very sorry ma'am; I don't take the paper, and so I can't see it."

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Click to play (joeweb)

[Tune notes by Artful Codger]
In the thread "Gold Miners' Songs (American)", Joe posted an ABC for "The Lousy Miner" as printed in Songs of the Gold Rush; the corresponding MIDI is linked above. The authors got the tune from Green Mountain (Helen Hartness Flander &o.: The New Green Mountain Songster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939.) It is entirely unlike the tune most widely associated with "The Dark-Eyed Sailor" nowadays. I have no access to this book, so I can't cite those authors' source, possibly the original Green Mountain Songster (1823). A Pioneer Songster (p. 50) says that, according to Green Mountain, the tune belongs to another ballad, "The Female Smuggler"; early broadsides corroborate this.

A different, if more suspect, setting is given by Irwin Silber and Earl Robinson in Songs of the Great American West, pp. 117-9, adapted from "a traditional tune"—could they have been more vague?

In the Library of Congress online collections are two sound recordings made by Sidney Robertson Cowell in the late 1930s of singers in Central Valley and Columbia, CA (not far from the former gold fields) singing "Dark-Eyed Sailor". Both use the widely-known tune.

Digital Tradition: The Lousy Miner (no music)
Digital Tradition: The Dark-Eyed Sailor (no music)
Mudcat thread: Fair Phoebe and Her Dark-Eyed Sailor
YouTube: Alan Rosevear (unaccompanied): Dark Eyed Sailor

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