There was a bit of a gap between my last two posts, for good reason. Part of that reason is simply that I’ve been finding it difficult to write in general lately, hence why any posts have been a bit short, but also my nan died a couple of weeks ago and I decided that I wasn’t going to force myself to do anything. I mention that because it’s led to me looking through old newspaper clippings and bits of papers which my nannan (a common name for grandmothers in my area) collected.
Amongst those old bits of paper was a poem written by my grandad, who died before I was born. It was from a church newsletter which my nannan used to help publish. My grandad, Henry Robinson, was an ex-miner who spent the end of his life affected by medical issues caused by his past down the pit. Here’s the poem he wrote (my own recent poem can be found here):
In case you can’t read the image, here’s the poem:
Coal is a mineral so hard to get, a job that men never forget. Men get hurt and men get killed just to get their job fulfilled. With picks and shovels they attack the coal They sweat and their backs ache to reach their goal. Its brought to your house and you have to pay cash It burns in the grate right down to the ash. It gives off warmth as it burns so bright And the flames also provide a lot of light. Coal is found right under the ground, it was millions of years before it was found. Many things from coal are made - some coal is poor, some is high grade. You get face powder, coke and oil There are many more things you get from co-al.
I don’t know for sure but I think that last “co-al” is meant to be pronounced ‘coil’ as that used to be a common pronunciation of coal back then, when a coal house was known as a coil-oil.
I particularly liked the mention of the coal being millions of years in the ground before it was found, something which might surprise modern creationists in particular considering it featuring in a church newsletter (Henry was Anglican, so evolution and the antiquity of the Earth were never an issue).
Henry was apparently an intelligent and thoughtful man who never had the chance to go to grammar school as, despite passing the exams, his family could not afford to buy the uniform (a side note – his dad was called Tommy Robinson, so it irks me that the EDL founder Stephen Yaxley-Lennon goes by ‘Tommy Robinson’ in order to sound more working class). Like many young working class men in South Yorkshire, Henry ended up working down the mines, where he probably encountered Carboniferous fossils. I like to think that he recognised them for what they were.
A couple of years ago, Dean Lomax and I made a video looking for some local Carboniferous fossils, the sorts my grandad might have seen:
The Palaeobabbler 