> Folk Music > Songs > One Miner’s Life

One Miner’s Life

[ Roud - ; Mudcat 23345 ; Ed Pickford]

Battlefield Band sang One Miner’s Life / The Image of God in 1982 on their Temple album There’s a Buzz. They noted:

These two songs highlight one another to great effect. The first is by Ed Pickford, from the great coal mining area of the North-East of England. He describes the reality of the miner’s life—being used, abused and rejected, depending on the economic climate.

Into the middle is dropped Alan [Reid]’s reworking of a heavily ironic piece by Joe Corrie, a miner poet from the Kingdom of Fife. He died in 1968. Alan wrote the tune and added the chorus.

Dick Gaughan sang One Miner’s Life in 1986 on his Scotland’s Trade Union Centre album of songs of the Scottish miners, True and Bold. He noted:

Ed Pickford wrote this in the rich language of Co Durham but no way was I going to attempt to mimic that so I translated some of the Durham words into Lothian Scots.

Bob Fox sang One Miner’s Life in 2006 on his Topic Temple album The Blast. He noted:

Written by the great North Eastern songwriter Ed Pickford in response to the migration of miners in the 1960s, it shows all of the coal mining communities’ experiences through one individual. There’s a bit of collective finger pointing in the chorus which can be translated as follows:

We know who you’re crying for,
We know who made us so poor.
Who knows what you’re going to do?
Who knows what’s in store for you.

Benny Graham sang One Miner’s Life on Andy May’s 2009 Fellside album Happy Hours. Andy May noted:

Benny sang this song as part of Jez Lowe’s “A Song for Geordie” tour in November 2007 and so I asked him to do it again here! It simply tells the story of one man from birth to old age. I find it a sobering reminder that had I been born a few generations earlier my life could have turned out very differently.

Lyrics

Please find the lyrics for this song at Ed Pickford’s website.