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The Bonny Pit Laddie

[ Roud 3487 ; Ballad Index CSBG054 ; trad.]

J. Collingwood Bruce, John Stokoe: Northumbrian Minstrelsy

The Celebrated Working Man’s Band played the tune Bonnie Pit Laddie in 1963 on Topic’s anthology of industrial folk music, The Iron Muse.

The High Level Ranters played the tune of The Bonny Pit Laddie and Johnny Handle sang The Bonny Pit Laddie in 1976 as the title track of their Topic album of ‘a miner’s life in music and song”, The Bonny Pit Laddie. They noted:

Love strikes the miner again! A song common in the repertoires of more than one coalfield with a well-known tune. This set is from the North-East.

Sandra Kerr sang The Bonnie Pit Laddie on her 1983 album Supermum and on her 2019 album Rebel With her Chords.

Liliana Bertolo, Evelyne Girardon and Sandra Kerr sang La Puissance D’Argent (The Power of Money), which includes The Bonnie Pit Laddie, in 1997 on their Fellside album Voice Union.

Sandra Kerr, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan played Cannie Hobbit Elliot and sang The Bonny Pit Laddie in 1999 on their Fellside album Scalene. They noted:

Though the English and Scots have mostly stopped squabbling over tracts of land it would seem that the old conflicts still remain concerning the origins of many Border melodies. Thomas Doubleday is quoted by Bruce and Stokoe in the Northumbrian Minstrelsy as saying of the first tune: “…as there were Elliotts on both sides of the border, I don’t see the Scotch have any exclusive right to it; besides, the tune being compound triple is in our favour.”

The gentle song that follows, extolling the virtues of the miner (remember him?), is not quite the version in the Minstrelsy, but displays another Northumbrian musical ‘peculiarity’ (Doubleday again): the Lydian mode.

Canny Fettle sang Bonny Pit Laddie in 2016 on their CD Still Gannin’ Canny.

Kathryn Tickell played the tune Bonnie Pit Laddie in 2019 on Stick in the Wheel’s album From Here: English Folk Field Recordings Volume 2.

Lyrics

Johnny Handle sings The Bonny Pit Laddie

The bonny pit laddie, the canny pit laddie,
The bonny pit laddie for me O,
He sits on his cracket as black as his jacket,
And brings the white siller te me O.
He works hard and he brings us all his money O,
He takes us in his arms and he calls me his hinney O.

The bonny pit laddie, the canny pit laddie,
The bonny pit laddie for me O,
He sits on his hunkers and yacks at the bunkers,
And brings the white siller te me O.
He comes hyem and he tells us all his troubles O,
He’s had a row wi’ the gaffer about his lazy marrers O.

The bonny pit laddie, the canny pit laddie,
The bonny pit laddie for me O,
He sits in his hole as black as the coal,
And brings the white siller to me O.
He comes hyem and he brings ’us all his money O,
He takes us in his arms and calls me his hinney O.

The bonny pit laddie, the canny pit laddie,
The bonny pit laddie for me O,
He sits on his cracket as black as his jacket,
And brings the white siller te me O.

Sandra Kerr, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan sing The Bonny Pit Laddie

Chorus (after each verse):
𝄆 The bonny pit laddie, the canny pit laddie,
The bonny pit laddie for me O. 𝄇

𝄆 He sits in a hole as black as the coal
And brings the bright silver for me O. 𝄇

𝄆 He sits on his crackit and hews in his jacket
And brings the bright silver for me O. 𝄇