Only A Miner

Slow banjo ballad with trio harmony on chorus
The earliest known ancestor of Aunt Molly’s ironic song was a poem written in 1879 by “Captain Jack” Crawford, who as a boy worked in the anthracite (“hard coal”) pits, and who served in a Pennsylvania “Miner’s Regiment” in the U.S. Civil War. Sue, Alice and Si’s sweet trio singing on the chorus is in stark contrast to the living and working conditions described.