Fife Miners
By Billy Kay
“Crawlin aboot like a snail in the mud,
Covered wi clammie blae,
Me, made after the image o’ God –
Jings! But it’s laughable, tae.
Howkin awa neath a mountain o stane,
Gaspin for want o air,
The sweat makin streams doon my bare back-bane
And my knees a’ hauckit and sair.i”
The daily darg of a Fife miner described with self-effacing humour and harsh realism in rich,
gritty Scots by Joe Corrie from Cardenden. I was raised speaking that language and
knowing that poem, as my mother grew up in Seiventeen Street, a Miners Raw in Bowhill
nearby. There her earliest memory was being sat on her uncle’s knee and taught the words
of The Red Flag during the 1926 General Strike and Lock Out. Bowhillwas known as one of
the Little Moscows of Fife! In 1945 the region elected Scotland’s only communist Member of
Parliament in Willie Gallacher while the local tradition of left-wing politics continues with two
prominent councillors from the area priding themselves in their nicknames as The Hammer
and The Sickle of Fife Council!
When you know their history, however, it is easy to understand why social justice and
community solidarity was at the core of their being, for colliers were only emancipated from
legal bondage in Scotland as late as 1799. Some commentators called them bonded slaves,
while others softened the stigma by referring to them as collier serfs, but whatever the
nomenclature, the result was that for hundreds of years the miners were a tribe apart, whose
suffering was a stain on the enlightened nation that Scotland was becoming. In Memorials
of his Time Lord Cockburn wrote “Wives, daughters and sons went on from generation to
generation under the system which was the family doom” Even decades after emancipation,
the truck system and ensuing indebtedness to the mine owners meant a continuation of the
old practices of whole families working to survive. In the 1840’s when Government
Commissioners reported on the state of the mining population, one of them came across a
wee thing called Janet Leveston bearing her burden of a muckle basket of coal on her back
up an interminable pit ladder….“She was a most interesting child, and perfectly beautiful, I
ascertained her age to be six years.”
www.educationscotland.gov.uk/marksonthelandscape
When eventually the miners combined and organised themselves under leaders like Keir
Hardie, you can understand why they preserved their radicalism! What is less well known
outwith the old mining communities though, is the vibrant sense of community spirit they also
retained and the plethora of organisations, clubs and societies that maintained the
community; the Co-operative Society, the choirs, pipe bands, brass bands, debating
societies, Burns Clubs, Quoiting Clubs, Young Pioneers, Socialist Sunday Schools, the
Doos, the Dugs, the Peds, the Ramblers, the freewheeling cycle clubs, the community
focuses called the Goths which ran pubs and even cinemas whose profits were put back into
the community, the dramatic societies which put on the plays of Joe Corrie, the football
clubs, the Workers Education Classes and many more too numerous to mention. The
outsiders’ image of a mining village is one devoid of culture, but those who belonged knew
that the communities contained a wide range of people and a cross section of society. The
father of the Scottish Literary Rennaissance, Hugh MacDiarmid for example, used to attend
the Burns Supper organised by the Bowhill People’s Burns Club so that he could spend the
day discussing politics and culture with his friend the working class intellectual, John
Murdoch.
The pits have all but disappeared, but for people like me generations removed from the
coalface, knowledge of the steiran, thrang, virr and smeddum of the mining communities will
always make us proud to come from mining stock. I am not alone, for according to the
historian of the miners, Robert Page Arnot, by the turn of the 20th century… “miners with
their wives and families must have made up nearly a fiftth of the total population of
Scotland.” That means there are a lot of “brither an sister Scots” like me with coal dust in
their blood.
Glossary
clammie blae:
howkin:
darg:
the Doos:
the Dugs:
the Peds:
steiran:
thrang:
virr:
smeddum:
damp bluish-grey clay
digging
work, shift
pigeon racing
greyhound or whippet racing
pedestrian athletes i.e. professional runners.
bustling
crowded
vitality
energy, resourcefulness
For more information visit www.billykay.co.uk
i
Corrie, Joe Plays, Poems and Theatre Writings. Edinburgh 1985 : 7:84 Publications.
ISBN 0948177004.
www.educationscotland.gov.uk/marksonthelandscape