Lyrics

She looked out the window
Around about half past five
She could see the smoke
Arising up from the colliery lights

She never felt the rumble
She never felt the bump
But the sight of the smoke arising
Made her heart start to jump

He was working the night shift
But before he walked out the door
She said, “I love you,” and he said,
“Babe, you know I love you more.”

He probably never saw it coming
He probably never felt a thing
When the devil showed up that morning
And he started to sing

CHORUS:
Twenty-six ghosts,
Twenty-six lives taken away
In a flash of light
Damn that dirty old coal mine.
What wouldn’t they give for one more chance,
One last kiss, one last dance
With the ones they left behind
But there’s twenty-six ghosts in the Westray mine.

They tried to say it was one of them things,
You take the hazards with the pay
But the deal was signed in coal dust
From the opening day

Now, it ain’t hard to understand
You put the money before the man
You put the coal before the miner
And now you got blood on your hands.

Now what’s left has all been razed
But in the early morning haze
They say you can still hear the miners
Singing from their graves.