My Grandfather was born in Southeastern Kentucky about 1885. There were two songs I can remember him singing, but I have forgotten(or never knew) the lyrics.One was called Dark as a Dungeon, and I remember fragments of it

Gather round children and pay me your mind Seek not your fortune in the depths of the mine

and the refrain

Where the rain never falls, and the sun never shines It's Dark as a Dungeon way down in the mine

Another song concerned Dale Collins(I think that was the name) a cave explorer who was trapped in a cave in Kentucky at the turn of the century, and became a sensation in the newspapers as it took the rescuers nearly a week to get to him. I can't remember a lick of that one.