We have a song exclusive from Anna Coogan with The Auchengeich Mining Disaster to which she has added additional lyrics to those written by Norman Buchan. The music, especially the percussion from Willie B, give it a strong industrial feel along with that unnerving sense of doom and loss. It’s also our Song of the Day. She shared the following about how she came across the song, I’d like to think it was fate:
Ithaca, NY has a lot of wonderful things going for it, but one of its lesser-known charms is the free piles. It is a college town and there are constantly people moving in and out, and they often leave their books and furniture behind. I found this little book of Scottish poetry (complete with tartan jacket) on the street a few years ago. I toured Scotland a few years ago, with only this book and an acoustic guitar for companionship. It was one of the best tours of my life.
The Auchengeich Mining Disaster was the most modern story in the book, and it appeared uncredited. (I later figured out it was written by the book’s editor, Norman Buchan). I added a chorus, translated a bit of the Scottish brogue to American English for my own sake (nothing more offensive than an American with a fake accent) and that was that. The song is about a real-life mining disaster that took place in 1959 near Glasgow, and pretty much the whole story is covered in Buchan’s poem, with stunning lyrics like “far better that we’d never wrought 1,000 years of work and grieving.”
The Auchengeich Mining Disaster served as a bit of musical bridge for me, between my old work as an acoustic-guitar playing folk singer, and my new work as a rock musician. This song sounds fine with just an acoustic guitar, but Willie’s drum’s really made it into something else altogether. He is such a creative force and found such a beautiful and unusual percussion for this song.
“The Auchengeich Mining Disaster”
Lyrics by Norman Buchan with additional lyrics by Anna Coogan/traditional
Music by Anna Coogan
In Auchengeich there stands a pit,
The wheel above it is not turning,
For on a gray September morn,
The fires of hell were slowly burning
The coal lay rich in Auchengeich
It’s richer now for all that burning
For forty-seven brave men died
to wives and sweethearts n’ere returning
Oh lift me up
Oh lay me down
Bury me deep
Below the ground
My love again
I n’ere shall see
Till cherries grow from an ivy tree
Oh coal is black, and coal is red
and coal is rich beyond a treasure
it’s black with work, it’s red with blood
it’s riches now in life we measure
I wish I wish
I wish in vain
I wish I was a maid again
but a maid again I n’ere shall be
till cherries grow
from an ivy res
Far better that we’d never wraught
Ten million years of work and grieving
The coal is black like the mourning shroud,
The women left behind are weaving
47 miners were killed at Auchengeich Colliery in Lanarkshire on the 18th of September 1959. Disaster struck when a faulty fan purifying the air in the colliery went on fire due to an electrical fault. The men were in bogies travelling to the coal face to start work, and due to the intense smoke they were abandoned just a few hundred yards from safety.*
In a film from the British Pathe film archive you can see the crowd awaiting information, it includes shots of the small stream being dammed to provide water for pumps to flood the pit which eventually put out the fire.
April 28th saw the release Anna Coogan’s ‘The Lonely Cry of Space and Time‘. You can read our review of the album here as well as a fascinating in-depth interview here.
Order The Lonely Cry of Space and Time via annacoogan.bandcamp.com/album/the-lonely-cry-of-space-and-time
*Wiki