I am thinking of the songs that have gone through my head..

1. It's a working man I am and I've beendown in the mines and I swear to God if I ever see the sun..Rita McNeil?? Macneil?
2. How little do the great ones know who sit at home secure what hidden dangers colliers face what hardships they endure
3. Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
4. black as the weather when we buried them together cause we couldn't tell their bones apart (from a gravestone in Black Diamond, WA, where it said morte in esplosione..5 Italian and one Slavic? names).
5. all their lives they dug their graves (this is a theme somehow in coal mining songs).

And I have wondered why we are so entranced with coal mining songs..certainly because so many of our ancestors worked in them..but I think it is more. Certainly because itis a dangeorus occupation but being a clerk in a convenience store is veryhazardous and we don't hear mnay songs..who knows. mg