Collier Sweetheart
My mother
said I could not have a collier
If I did it would break her heart
I didn’t care what my mother told me
I had a collier for my sweetheart
But one day up Cadger’s Loan
The siren screamed at Pit Four head
All of Plean ran to find out
How many living, how many dead?
Lowsing time in the Carbrook Dook
The young shotfirer fired his shot
Dynamite blew up the section
Twelve lads dead, seventy caught
Their holiday bags were lying waiting
The men were lying down below
he wee canaries they died too
Salty tears in the sad Red Rows
The young shotfirer had no certificate
My young collier gave his life
Fate was cruel to my sweetheart
And I will never be a wife
My mother said I could not have a collier
If I did it would break her heart
I didn’t care what my mother told me
I had a collier for my sweetheart
Ewan McVicar was asked by the Tolbooth Project in Stirling to write songs with the P5 class in East Plean Primary School. Ewan’s mother was born in Plean and Ewan remembered that his grandfather, Hugh Reynolds, had told him about being in a mining disaster. Ewan's grandfather had heard the sound of the 1921 explosion when he was hewing (cutting coal) in the next-door pit. Ewan looked up old newspapers to get details of what happened. Then he and P5 wrote this song.
A collier is a coal miner. Cadger’s Loan ran from Plean village up the hill to where the coal pits were. The Loan has been renamed President Kennedy Avenue.
The shotfirer is the man who bores a hole, packs it with dynamite, then fires the dynamite to open up a new area of rock for the miners to get the coal from.
The men expected to come up after their shift and collect their holiday bags for their annual two weeks' holiday from work. The miners lived in streets called the Red Rows, because they were built of red brick.
The first verse is from a traditional song about a girl who wants to marry a coal miner. The tune is sometimes called 'Willie Taylor'.
