Tommy the Trapper

My name is Tommy, I’m just six years old,

I work in the dark and the damp and the cold

Underground in a coal mine, down, down deep,

Twelve hours a day and not a minute’s sleep.

Twelve hours a day with a rope in my hand,

Sat in a tunnel that’s too low to stand,

I listen for a knock, then know what to do,

Pull on the rope, let the coal tub through.

There’s a trapdoor close by here where I sit,

A trapdoor I have to make sure is kept shut.

Beyond it, leading away from my place,

Another tunnel runs up to the coal face

Where my dad kneels with his pick cutting coal,

My mum just behind him shovelling it all

Into tubs for my sisters, ten and nine

To push and pull the length of the mine,

To the shaft bottom from where, at a shout,

Some folks up top will haul it all out.

It’s important that once I’ve let a tub pass

The trapdoor swings shut because of the gas.

There’s fire damp and choke damp, so grown-ups say,

We need the fresh air to blow them away.

For six days a week it’s here that I sit,

Tommy the Trapper, the lad down the pit.

                                                                                                                 Dave Alton