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The Pitmen’s Union

[ Roud - ; Mudcat 70303 ; trad.]

Frankie Armstrong sang The Pitmen’s Union in 1975 on her Topic album Songs and Ballads. A.L. Lloyd noted:

The words are on a broadside published by J. Bristow, 203 Gallowgate, Glasgow; no date, but probably issued a bit before the middle of the nineteenth century when the old rural kind of folk songs were giving way to the new industrial songs, and for a short time the two traditions mingled as here. We have no tune for the song, so the words have been fitted to the melody of another early industrial song, the mine-disaster ballad of Johnny Seddon. Rustic idyll combines nicely with trade union sentiment. Frankie Armstrong calls it “a graceful hybrid”. Fair enough.

Lyrics

Frankie Armstrong sings The Pitmen’s Union

’Twas on the fifth of April, the days being long and clear;
How bright did shine the sun and how fresh did blow the air.
I overheard a fair pretty maid, so sweetly she did sing,
As she sat under a little brown cow, a-milking by the stream.

A young man stepped up to her and he bended of his knee,
He asked her kindly for a drink to help him on his way.
“Some milk to you I’ll freely give, young fella,” she replies,
“But tell me first do you belong to the bold brave union boys?”

“Can’t you see that I’m a collier, for I’m black as any sloe,
And all this night I’ve picked and hewed in the darkness here below.”
“O I do love the collier lads, they are my dear delight,
For my father was a pitman all the days of his life!”

“With steam upon the ocean, and with steam upon the land,
And what could we de know at all, without our collier men?
Down in the dark they toil to bring the coal above the ground,
And we know they’re working day and night with dangers all around.”

She put her arms around him like a violet ’round a vine,
Cryin’, “You are my bonny collier lad that’s won this heart of mine!
And if that you do treat me well and be my dear sweetheart,
I’ll crown you in glory and forever take your part.”

So come, all you fair young maids wherever that you be,
And don’t despise the collier lads in any one degree!
For if that you do treat them well, they’ll do the same to thee,
O there’s no one in this whole wide world but a bonny pit lad for me.