Trimdon Grange Explosion

AKA
First Published1882

Writer/composerTommy ArmstrongRoudRN3189

Music Hall PerformersTommy Armstrong
Folk performancesCollected from the singing of:
Sewell and Jefferson ; England : Northumberland ; 1951
Modern performances: Louis Killen, Martin Carthy, Bob Davenport and many more
Tune: Go and leave me if you wish it

Let us not think about to-morrow,
Lest we disappointed be;
For all our joys they may quickly turn to sorrow,
As we all may daily see.
To-day we’re strong and healthy,
Tomorrow there comes the change,
As we may see from the explosion
That has been at Trimdon Grange.

Men and boys set out that morning,
For to earn their daily bread;
Never thinking that by the evening,
They’d be numbered with the dead.
Let’s think of Mrs Burnett,
Once had sons but now has none;
In the Trimdon Grange disaster,
Joseph George and James are gone.

February has left behind it
What will never be forgot;
Weeping women and helpless children
May be found in many’s the cot.
They ask if father’s left them
And the mother she hangs her head,
With a weeping widow’s feelings
She tells the child its father’s dead.

God protect the lonely widow
And raise each drooping head.
Be a father unto the orphans
Do not let them cry for bread.
Death will pay us all a visit,
They have only gone before.
And we will meet the Trimdon victims
Where explosions are no more.

A song by “The Pitman Poet” Tommy Armstrong, it has been formally collected only once, from the singing of R Sewell and J Jefferson by AL Lloyd.

Like many local Music Hall songs of this period, it was sung to well known tune, in this case, to that of a popular sentimental song from the early 1880s – Go and leave me if you wish it

Bob Fox and Benny Graham sing a traditional unaccompanied version:

Post-punk stalwarts The Mekons give it a go

Sources:

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