Come all you young fellows so brave and so fine
And seek not your fortune way down in the mine
It will form as a habit and seep in your soul
Till the streams of your blood run as black as the coal.
Chorus:
For it's dark as a dungeon and dank as the dew
Where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It's as dark as a dungeon way down in the mines.
There's many a man I have known in my day
Who has lived just to labour his whole life away
Like the fiend for his dope or the drunkard his wine
A man will have lust for the lure of the mine.
The morning, the evening, the middle of the day
There the same to the miner who labours away
And the one who's not careful will never survive
One fall of the slate and you're buried alive
I hope when I die and the ages shall roll
That my body will blacken, and turn into coal
As I look from the door of my heavenly home
I'll pity the miner a slave to my bones.