Lyr Req: Song about mine horses

Subject: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,Raffi Maslan
Date: 18 Mar 17 - 08:18 PM

Many times over the years I've heard songs about mining, and other songs about horses. At one point, I heard a song about a horse in a mine. All I can remember of it is that it was specifically about the horse, rather than the minors, and about the horse's day being done, possibly due to technology coming along and replacing the job.

Does this ring any bells? Even if this devolves to a listing of mining songs about animals, that's a step in the right direction.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: Jeri
Date: 18 Mar 17 - 08:25 PM

Here's one: Blossom, the Mining Horse

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,Ebor Fiddler
Date: 18 Mar 17 - 08:56 PM

So you won't want "Little Chance" then, or "The Collier's Rant"?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: Stewie
Date: 18 Mar 17 - 10:36 PM

Perhaps the song you are looking for is Jez Lowe's 'Galloways' with its reference to retired blind pit ponies.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Mar 17 - 11:45 PM

Good timing, Joe posting the words to Mule in the Mines

http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?ThreadID=161724

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Mar 17 - 12:39 AM

Yup, Acme, I was inspired by this very thread. Horses are fine, I guess, but My Sweetheart's the Mule in the Mines, a song that's occasionally heard here in the California Gold Rush country (don't know if it was sung during the actual Gold Rush, though....)

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: mg
Date: 19 Mar 17 - 03:23 AM

Coal.town road too.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: Zhenya
Date: 19 Mar 17 - 04:37 AM

On seeing this thread title, I also immediately thought of the song "Galloways" mentioned by Stewie above. But the line from the lyrics you mentioned reminded me of another song, "The Last Trip Home." It's about a regular work horse, not one in the mines, but the chorus includes the line "The horse's day is gone." Here are a few links



The Last Trip Home Mudcat thread

The Last Trip Home YouTube Video

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,John Mackenzie
Date: 24 Mar 17 - 09:39 AM

I have the song called Blossom the mining horse it is on an album by Australian John Warner on a album called pithead in the fern. Good song

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: MMario
Date: 24 Mar 17 - 03:04 PM

There is a song about pit ponies....something about seeing the sun, smelling the pasture.....

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: MMario
Date: 24 Mar 17 - 03:32 PM

AHA! Endless working days


Subject: RE: BS: Last pit pony dies
From: GUEST,Observer - PM
Date: 09 Apr 07 - 03:06 PM

A song wriiten by Steve Harrison who sings with a UK four piece called Quartz.

Endless Working Days


Chorus
In a world where there's no Summer no warming sunshine's rays
In a world where there's no Winter no snowflakes on my face
No gentle spring, no Autumn winds no luscious grass to graze
No babbling brook to drink from just Endless Working days.


The year is 1892, I'm young with spirits high
My home a meadow by the fields of barley, corn and rye
But Master's sold me to the men, who own the new coal mine.
And now I'm sentenced to a life, among the dust and grime.
Ch

Now I'm put in harness, pulling coal tubs from the seam
Those long lost days of Summer, well now there just a dream,
My coat is scarred and dirty, the light fades in my eye
I hope to be released one day, I hope before I die.
Ch

Though I'm old and weary, the work gets harder still
I'm longing to be back, in that meadow by the mill
They say they've now got engines, to pull the tubs of coal
And soon I'll be released from, this underground hell hole.
Ch

Now at last the day's arrived, my shackles they have gone
I'm taken to the pit-head, my working days are done.
I can feel the breeze of Autumn, smell the harvest of the fields
I'm going to my meadow, to end my days in peace.

To a world where there's a Summer with warming sunshine's rays
A world where there's a Winter with snowflakes on my face
The gentle spring, the Autumn winds, with luscious grass to graze,
a babbling brook to drink from until my dying day.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Mar 17 - 07:59 PM

Hi, John -
Do you have the lyrics to "Blossom the Mining Horse"??
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,#
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 11:59 AM

http://forum.cyberhorse.com.au/forums/archive/index.php/t-73404.html

Lyrics to "Blossom the Mining Horse" at that site.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GerryM
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 05:28 PM

The lyrics to Blossom are also in the thread to which Jeri linked, in the second post in the current thread. Also at Marg Walters' site, click on Lyrics, then on Pithead in the Fern, then on Blossom.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 05:51 PM

Pony Driver's Song from Yorkshire Garland Group

Chorus; (For) I am a driver, these are me tubs, Ah'm up the road, old (lads) boys, my pony rubs,
Where is the doggie? Nobody knows. He's dahn by the pass-by a-picking his nose!

1. Ah shall be glad when this shift is done; Ah shall be up there out in the sun,
Tha'll still be down here in this dark 'oil, a grunting and groaning and pulling the coil.

2. All t' corn's in t' manger and watter's in t' trough, tha'll pull thi noase aht when tha's enough,
Ah'll tek thee in t' standing and drop off thi gear. When Ah comes back Ah know tha'll be here.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 05:57 PM

While not a song, there is a delightful monologue from the stage play of "Beyond the Fringe." (London, circa 1964)

Peter Cook is delivering "Whoops! Did you notice that I suddenly went, WHOOPS? it is an impediment I got down in the mines. I was walking along in the dark, and I came across the body of a dead pit-pony. WHOOPS! I went in surprise! And ever since I have been going, WHOOPS!

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 06:01 PM

The useless drivel we learn as youth

when scripture may have served better..

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 31 Jan 21 - 07:53 AM

A book in the Working Class Museum Library collection called Songs of the Durham Coalfield tells the history of the family and working life of pit deputy Jock Purdon.

Hally's Piebald Gallowa is the story of Jimmy Hall's piebald Galloway Pit Pony called Saul eating the 'Lumley Six' banner as it hung out to dry.

'The Gallowa was hungry,
The banner tasted good
It 'et half of Keir Hardie
And chewed up Martin Jude.'

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 31 Jan 21 - 08:57 AM

You won't find any Irish songs about 'mining horses' (pit ponies is the term I was brought up with in Durham) because there were none in the much smaller coalfield in Arigna on the Leitrim/Roscommon border.

The men themselves hauled the tubs out of the mines- 'hardships, I'll tell you about hardships' as Percy Ling once said....

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Song about mine horses
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 03 Feb 21 - 01:17 AM

There is evidence of pit ponies being used in Co Wicklow.

The Miners Way

I met another former miner on a sunny July morning in his home near Laragh. John Byrne took a small, faded brown envelope from his top pocket; his pay packet from 1955 with name and wages pencilled on the outside. He explained that apart from forestry work or farm labouring there was little local employment when he was young. The mines paid best and it was either that or take the boat to England.

“Two shillings an hour, that’s what I got for minding the pit ponies. I would have been paid half a crown an hour for work underground but I loved working with the ponies, it got me out in the air, out of the tunnel.” His stories inspired one of the eight poems in my Miners’ Way sequence, Pit Ponies of Glendasan. Sadly John Byrne died a few months after our conversation.

Pit Ponies of Glendasan
By Jane Clarke

Hitched to an eight-hour shift
in britchens, hames and traces,
they follow the miners’ carbide lights,

halt under hoppers, turn
on a thruppence and lean into their collars
to pull the five-wagon train.

Low-set cobs from the Curragh,
a piebald and two greys, their hooves
fall heavy as hammers on granite.

They haul lengths of larch for pit props,
pneumatic drills, boxes of gelignite,
and, from time to time, deliver

injured men back to daylight.
The miners pat their necks in passing
and feed them windfall apples;

comrades in toil and the first to stall,
legs locked at a sudden rumbling, a change
in the air or the rush of running water.