Miners' Songs
There was a sad and pretty song written about the Avondale disaster. The miners had plenty of songs, a number of them, like Civil War songs, written to old tunes brought over from Ireland. Anyone familiar with Irish folk music has heard some of these tunes. Several decades ago, a fellow named Charles Korson went around PA collecting miners' songs on paper and record. The result was a book entitled Minstrels of The Mine Patch and a collection of recordings for the Library of Congress, Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miners.

One of my favorite songs is about Reilly who couldn't read No Smoking signs and lit up his pipe in the powder works:

Up went Reilly
far above the town!
And men that travel like Reilly did
are seldom ever found.

Then there's this one from John L. Lewis days:

I t'ink I sing a little song
Hope I ain't sain' nuthin' wrong!
Hope this fills you up with cheer
just like twot'ree shots a beer!

Union man, union man,
he must have full dinner can!
A-F-L-C-I-O,
callin' "Strike!"
Out we go!

And finally here's one called The Sugar Notch Entombment. I never heard this, don't know the tune of it and don't see how it even fits a tune, but there's a lot of stretching in folk music. It's about trapped miners forced to eat their mule. You may want to skip the fourth verse. It would be interesting to learn if the guys in the song were real people.

It was in the month of April in eighteen seventy-nine
When seven men came to Sugar Notch to work down in the mine.
The night shift was before them and honest they began
The driver came and told them that the mine was caving in.

They walked in the gangway and then sat down,
They held a consultation and the talk went all around;
Pricey held the safety lamp and Reilly he was last,
Hawkins put up his hand and shut off all the gas.

The rocks stood on their edges up against the roof,
And all of them sat quiet, afraid for to make a move.
Some were very hungry and some were very weak;
Says Johnny Green, "Let's kill the mule and have a jolly feast."

So Bill Kinney went and got his mule and tied him to a prop,
The tears came rolling down his cheeks saying, "Harry, you must drop."
On picking up the hammer, Johnny Green found it to be dull,
He hit the poor old mule ten times on the head before he cracked his skull.

Then Kinney said, "Harry, you're dead and gone; your life is gone astray,
But many a hundred cars of coal you've pulled out of this gangway,
Many a driver's drove you, but now your driving's at an end."
They hauled him in and shared him fair between the seven men.

From Minstrels of the Mine Patch, Korson

More Things in Heaven, Earth and under the Earth: A Mine Ghost Story

Back around 1962, a few miners became trapped in a mine near Sheppton, PA, a few miles west of Hazleton. Their plight attracted national media attention. As they waited in the dim, dying lamp light, wondering if they'd ever be rescued, these miners spotted figures moving through the mine tunnels. They appeared to be other miners. Thinking they were fellow cave-in prisoners or even rescuers, the trapped miners called out to these other men each time one passed by. But no answer was returned. In fact these silent visitors were seen disappearing into the tunnel walls. Then after several days, the miners saw a vision of Pope John XXIII. He appeared to be giving them a blessing and it was then that they knew they would be all right. They were rescued. They agreed among themselves not to tell the media or otherwise broadcast their supernatural experience. Nevertheless the story did get around the little towns in that corner of Schuylkill County andwas told to me by an old Oneida man.