Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner

Subject: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: oombanjo
Date: 27 Sep 03 - 06:26 AM

Although I have the words for this from the recording There is one line that I can not get, Is it Gullible is a terrible place , They rub wet clay in the miners face, and around the heaps they run a foot race, to catch the black leg miner.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 27 Sep 03 - 06:33 AM

'Delaval' is a terrible place..that's Seaton Delaval in Northumberland. It's not that bad, really.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: MartinRyan
Date: 27 Sep 03 - 06:53 AM

Interesting. Is it not ".. run up a trace to catch..." with trace meaning trip wire?

Regards

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: oombanjo
Date: 27 Sep 03 - 07:04 AM

You are right, (a trip wire) but how about, 'across the way they string a line, to cathch the throat, or break the spine,of the dirty black leg miner'.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: Leadfingers
Date: 27 Sep 03 - 07:11 AM

I have that line as Catch the throat AND break the spine-- Makes a bit more (nasty)sense that way

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Sep 03 - 08:07 AM

Found once only in tradition, so far as can be told; all variant forms are recent and seem to derive from commercial recordings. See

THE BLACKLEG MINERS  Text and tune from A. L. Lloyd, Folksong in England.

Lyr Req: Black Leg Miner  Transcription from a Ewan MacColl record by a Polish person with very good English but an understandable weakness when it came to placenames. With some background information.

Help: 'duds' in Blackleg Miner  Worth a look for the bizarre and unlikely suggestions it contains.

Lyr Req: Blackleg miner  In spite of its title, this thread is about a completely different song with a completely different name.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: Gurney
Date: 28 Sep 03 - 04:50 AM

'Duds' is reported to be rough clothes and also rags in my ancient dictionary.
It used to be traditional in the midlands of England, and possibly elsewhere, to rip up a miners 'pit' clothes on his last day. I worked at a pit until it closed, about 1958, and most of us arrived back at the 'Bank'(pithead) stark naked except for helmet, lamp, boots and belt.
"Rap her tae Bank, me bonny lad, wind the wheel, keep turnin', the back-shift lads is comin yame, they'll be back here in morning."

"You may tear up his clothes, for his mining's all done."

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: GUEST,ossonflags
Date: 28 Sep 03 - 08:10 AM

I always understood it as "is gannin yame"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 28 Sep 03 - 08:27 PM

I have always detested this song and will never be able to understand the mentality of anybody who actually makes a choice to get up on stage and sing it.

One man's "blackleg" is another man's entrepreneur, just as one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Murray

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 28 Sep 03 - 09:25 PM

You probably need to have lived in a mining area in order fully to understand the strength of feeling involved. One person's burglar or mugger is probably another's entrepreneur, too.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Sep 03 - 03:14 AM

Murray, I am sure a lot of people,past and present,who have withdrawn their labour to try and improve conditions for the future would disagree with you.

Read blackleg, read scab


Jack London wrote the most famous description of scabs over a century ago:

"When God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which he made a scab...
... the modern strikebreaker sells his birthright, his country, his wife, his children, and his fellow men for an unfilled promise from his employer, trust, or corporation" sounds familiar don't it?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: GUEST,ossonflags
Date: 29 Sep 03 - 04:12 AM

oops! last "Guest" was me.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: Gareth
Date: 29 Sep 03 - 07:10 PM

I've heard "Black Leg Miner", and "Gresford" (to the Botany Bay varient) sung in SWales in 1983. By Striking Colliers, The memory still brings tears.

And remember the lads at Maerdy, and thier wives, and the canteen and office staff marched out when they shut Maerdy a few yeas later to a mass chorus of Boyce's "Dew its hard" See DT.

Blickies

Gresford

Dew its hard

Gareth

BTW - And some people wonder about my politics

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dirty Black Leg Miner
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 02:23 AM

Ah---"Rap'er tae bank, me canny lads!" Thanks for the chance reference---brings back memories of many a friend of long ago [ye'd better believe it!---Long ago!] Brian Watson, Geordie Hunter, Jim Sharp, Benny 'the Whale" Graham, the "Ranters" and 'way in the mists of time , "Northern Front". I listened to all of them sing it, over quite a few years. Great folkdays in Northumberland!