A Welsh Coal Mines web page
The Colliery Wheel
(The last Welsh Pit)
Spinning spinning wheels of steel
Do you know how colliers feel?
As down the shaft they go so low
In darkness blacker than the crow,
Without the pale silvery light
Of moonlight on a starry night.
Hidden faces masked in dust
Forging friendships full of trust,
Muscles hard as iron bands,
Scars and callus on their hands,
From their bodies sweat doth stream
Cutting coal form narrow seam.
Through days of hardship and great strife
They fought to save a way of life,
As one against the rich man's might
In victory they won the right,
To mine the rich seams of black gold
And share the wealth these mountains hold.
The Llynfi Valley Yesteryear
Before the days of coal and steam
Salmon returned to mountain stream,
That turned the waterwheel each morn
To grind the crops of oats and corn.
The timid deer and her fawn
Together grazed at break of dawn.
Beneath a canopy of trees
With branches swaying in the breeze.
Then came a different kind of wheel
That turned to meet man's greed for steel,
The foundry's plume of acrid smoke
With hills bereft of ash and oak.
The river bed ran red with rust
As miners choked upon the dust,
And slag heaps like the ocean's tides
Engulfed the grassy mountain sides.
Susan May (Maesteg)
The Llynfi Valley Today
Come, walk with me the mountain side
Down pathways where the coal tips hide,
Pass old dwellings that by the score
Once housed the men who dug the ore.
.
For nature has been kind to man
To heal the land as nature can
And paint each season in its turn
With purple heather, gorse and fern
No coal drams rising from the mine
Or trucks that trundled down the line,
Wild roses growing on the ridge
Entwine the rusty iron bridge.
Are they lost in the dusts of time?
To be recalled in prose and rhyme,
Like memoirs of a distant life
With unity where once was strife.
Susan May (Maesteg)
Yr Olwyn Lonydd
(Hen Löwr Mewn Amgueddfa)
Hen olwyn lonydd, yr wyt ti
Yn dwyn yn awr yn ôl i mi
Atgofion am yr amser gynt
Pan oeddwn hapus ar fy hynt.
Fe welaist ti'r, hen olwyn ddur
Fel minnau lawer loes a chur,
Wrth godi'r glo o'r tywyll ffas
I olau clir yr awyr las.
A gofi di, hen olwyn fawr,
Fy mrawd a minnau'n mynd i lawr,
Yn ddwfn i mewn i'r dyfnder du
Yn wyneb y peryglon lu?,
Y mae'r blynyddoedd wedi ffoi
Ac nid wyt ti yn awr yn troi,
'R ôl hir fynyddoedd wrth dy waith
A minnau'n dod i ben fy nhaith.
Er bod y pwll yn awr yn fud
Daw'r lleisiau ataf i o hyd,
Lleisiau fy hen gydweithwyr sydd,
Yn galw arnaf nos a dydd.
Susan May (Maesteg)