Maybe, maybe - but Jack Orion isn't much fun either way, though I do concede that The Blackleg Miner is a fine piece of work and have no qualms regards the violence which is pure reportage on one level, and justified warning on the other. As Young Buchan points out - It lasts that long. It's that important.

Question here is, do we go rooting through the electoral rolls in search of Wm Sampney and his decendents thus risking the raising of all manner of ghosts and skeletons? Or do we perhaps allow for the possibility that the real folk process could be at work here to the extent where The Yahie Miners was based The Blackleg Miner? After all, I have, somewhere, pictures of Chopwell Miners working in Canada and America. The earliest source for The Collier's Rant is 1812 - could the roots of The Blackleg Miner be of a similar age?

Certainly when (say) Dave (Bridge) Minikin sings it, I suspend all such concerns and immerse myself in the beauty of the thing. And no mention yet of Kieth Blackburn's Bootleg Taxi parody which is a thing of wonder too...

And for those of you who missed it earlier:

Suibhne O'Piobaireachd (aka Sedayne) Sings The Collier's Rant on the Afternoon of Friday 25th of June 2010

Maybe I'll do The Blackleg Miner next time...