Songs and rhymes of a lead miner

as a lead washer at the age of thirteen, for the magnificent wage of fivepence per day. This was increased at the rate of one penny or twopence yearly, at the discretion of the manager. After working five years at lead washing it came my turn to go underground as a labourer and miner's assistant, where in course of time I became a fully qualified lead miner. I will not weary my readers with an account of my ups and downs in life or of my many startling experiences in the lead and coal mines. I was a coal miner in different parts of Scotland for six years. I did not take kindly to the work, and when I left it I fervently hoped it was for good. Of the coal miners I have a high opinion. Beneath the rough exterior of the most of them they are true to the core; brave hearted men, who have proved their sterling worth on many a shell-torn, blood-stained field, and in many an appalling mine disaster; ready to fight, suffer, or die on the field of battle for their ideals: ready in the mine disaster to go to almost certain death to rescue their comrades. Can human nature rise higher than this? My hobby has been the study of music and the playing of different instruments. I have gained an elementary knowledge of composition, harmony, and counterpoint, and in the playing of different instruments made myself fairly expert. My favourite is the violin, and my earnings with it at concerts, balls, kirns, and merry-makings generally enabled my wife to keep the pot boiling and the bairns fed and clad when the lead miner's wage was utterly inadequate for that purpose. At the outbreak of the Great War I commenced to rhyme. I am sorry if the jingo spirit is too evident in some of my pieces. Such were composed in the dark days, when our brave soldiers had their backs at the wall, and required every moral and material support that could be given them. For the political and religious bias of my pieces I make no apology. I make no claim to the honour of being a Poet; that I have no claim will be evident to cultured minds to whom these songs and rhymes will no doubt appear poor in conception, crude in expression, grammatically wrong in parts, and altogether…