Ballad of Springhill - Barbara Dickson

In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia

Down in the dark of The Cumberland Mine

There’s blood on the coal and the miners lie

In the roads that never saw sun nor sky

Roads that never saw sun nor sky

In the town of Springhill, you don’t sleep easy

Often the earth will tremble and roll

When the earth is restless, miners die

Bone and blood is the price of coal

In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia

Late in the year of fifty-eight

Day still comes and the sun still shines

But it’s dark as the grave in the Cumberland Mine

Down at the coal face, miners working

Rattle of the belt, and the cutter’s blade

Rumble of rock and the walls close round

The living and the dead men two miles down

Twelve men lay two miles from the pitshaft

Twelve men lay in the dark and sang

Long hot days in a miner’s tomb

It was three feet high and a hundred long

Three days passed and the lamps gave out

And Caleb Rushton, he up and said:

«There's no more water nor light nor bread

So we’ll live on hope and songs instead.»

Listen for the shouts of the bareface miners

Listen through the rubble for a rescue team

Six hundred feet of coal and a slag

Hope imprisoned in a three foot seam

Eight days passed and some were rescued

Leaving the dead to die alone

Through all their lives they dug a grave

Two miles of earth for a marking stone