 |
||||
 |
|
|
|
|
| • Home • The People Must Pay • Poetry • Links • Contact • | ||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The Miner’s Cottage |
by Verna Dobson |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
No warm fitted carpets from wall to door Just two proggy mats on the cold stone floor No bright electric bulbs to light up the room Just one oil lamp to penetrate the gloom Bathing in a tin bath, cold, rough and hard Their netty an ash closet outside in the yard Miners’ homes were very humble abodes Stretching from the pit head in long straight roads Water to be carried from a pump along the street While children booled iron hoops for them that was a treat By eighteen eighty seven miners worked a nine hour day And every two weeks, received their well earned pay |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Men and boys toiled in wet dark coal seams Sometimes, bent on their knees under low wood beams Women baked, possed and cleaned from morn’ until night Then sat and made proggy mats by the dim light A miner’s garden was his pride and joy Growing all kinds of vegetables, with help from his boys Sunday to the village was a day of rest When all the people went to church dressed in their Sunday best Life was hard but the people were close Ready to help anyone with troubles or woes |
||||
|
Listen to the author reading this poem |
|
|||
|
If you have a slow connection, you may have to wait a while
|
||||
|
• Back to previous page
•
|
||||
|
||||
|
The Victorian Blyth website is maintained by Blyth Resource & Initiative Centre Website design: McKenzie Media |
||||