AN OLD woman in the mining region of Central Pennsylvania describes her troubles in this ballad by Felix O’Hare, The Shoofly colliery failed to offer miners work in the 1870s, and already in debt to her neighbors the woman foresees the worst.  This is from the George Korson Recordings of Pennsylvania Coal Miners Collection at the Library of Congress. Daniel Walsh sings beautifully in this recording of 1946.

This ballad articulates the thoughts of the miners in the depression of the early ’70’s. In 1871 the little mine patch of Valley Furnace received a blow from which it never recovered: the mine gave out. Normally the miners might have found jobs at the Shoofly, a nearby colliery. There, however, a bad seam had been struck and men were being laid off. The only alternative to starvation was to gather meager belongings, leave old associations, and trek across the Broad Mountain in to the Mahanoy Valley then being opened to mining. [Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miners, Recorded and Edited by George Korson, 1947 ]

THE SHOOFLY

As I went a-walking one fine summer’s morning,
It was down by the Furnace I chanced for to stroll.
I espied an old lady, I’ll swear she was eighty,
At the foot of the dirt banks a-rooting for coal;
And when I drew nigh her she sat on her hunkers
For to fill up her scuttle she just had begin
And to herself she was singing a ditty,
And these are the words the old lady did sing:

CHORUS,
Crying O-ho! Sure I’m nearly distracted,
For it’s down by the Shoofly they cut a bad vein;
And since they condemned the old slope at the Furnace,
Shure all me fine neighbors must leave here again.

2. “‘Twas only last evenin’ that I asked McGinley
To tell me the reason the Furnace gave o’er.
He told me the company had spent eighty thousand,
And finding no prospects they would spend no more.
He said that the Diamond it was rather bony,
Beside too much dirt in the seven-foot vein;
And as for the Mammoth, there’s no length of gangway,
Unless they buy land from old Abel and Swayne.

Chorus

3. “And as for Michael Rooney, I owe him some money,
Likewise Patrick Kearns, I owe him some more;
And as for old John Eagen, I’ll ne’er see his wagon,
But I think of the debt that I owe in the store.
I owe butcher and baker, likewise the shoemaker,
And for plowin’ me garden I owe Pat McQuail;
Likewise his old mother, for one thing and another,
And to drive away bother, an odd quart of ale.

Chorus

4. “But if God spares me children until the next summer,
Instead of a burden, they will be a gain;
And out of their earnin’s I’ll save an odd dollar,
And build a snug home at the ‘Foot of the Plane.’
Then rolling in riches, in silks and in satin,
I ne’er shall forget the days I was poor,
And likewise the neighbors that stood by my children,
Kept want and starvation away from me door.”

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