The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #111922 Message #2362732
Posted By: Jack Campin
10-Jun-08 - 06:55 PM
Thread Name: Folklore: Johnny Cope - what are 'the coals'?
Subject: RE: Folklore: Johnny Cope - what are 'the coals'?
The battle was in the middle of one of the largest coalmining districts in the world. It is not very likely that anything metaphorical was meant.
Not all the soldiers on Cope's side were army regulars. A lot of the dead and wounded would have been local miners, factory workers and farm labourers, who would have had to get back to their jobs and "gang to the coals in the morning" again when it was all over. Colliers and salters were serfs, and there was no entitlements for time off while sword cuts healed. The line reflects Skirving's upper-class contempt for them by using that status as an insult directed at Cope; it's saying he was a peon only fit to work the mines. Just about everybody in Skirving's position regarded colliers as literally subhuman.
Those workers wouldn't have gone a bundle on the gloating tone of Skirving's song. (Burns didn't like it much, for similar reasons).