Springhill Mine Disaster

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Lyrics

Listen friends to my story
It’s sad but it’s true
Some hundred men went down the mine
Who were just like me and you

There came a violent upheaval
Many hundred feet below
It was a tragic sight to see
How these poor men did go

It was on the first of November
When eyes with tears did fill
Disaster hit the number four
In the mining town of Springhill

Volunteers and Draeger’s crews
Struggled on in vain
Through gas and broken timbers
But death was there the same

Trying to reach their companions
Away down in the mine
Eighty-eight were rescued
With twenty-six left behind

Men with courage and nerves of steel
Deadly gas waiting to kill
The worst disaster in many a year
In the mining town of Springhill

Source: Rosenberg, Neil V. 2000. The Springhill Mine Disaster Songs: Class, Memory, and Persistence in Canadian Folksong. In Northeast Folklore: Essays in Honor of Edward D. Ives, ed. Pauleena MacDougall and David Taylor, 153-87. Orono, ME: University of Maine Press & Maine Folklife Center.


One response to “Springhill Mine Disaster”

  1. […] monoxide it created quickly killed the 26 miners working in the mine at the time of the blast.[5][6] The levels of carbon monoxide and methane would have built up quickly and significantly after the […]

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