Bono: "Like to...I'd like to try a song that I think we've only played once before, so. This is a city that a...a lot of Irish people came to this city, right? So this time...this Irish...these Irish people came as rock and roll band, okay? So...but this is a folk song. It's like...the Irish kinda' hold America in a very special place because, for over a hundred years or more, Irish have come over here to find work and find a future. And they brouught with them songs, old Irish folk songs that became old American folk songs. And, I hope maybe we'd leave behind some songs one day. This is a song written by Peggy Seeger. It's a song...I wished I'd heard this song on the raidio during the miners' strike in England a few years ago. This is called Springhill Mining Disaster."
In the town of Springhill Nova Scotia
Down in the dark of the Cumberland mine
There's blood on the coal, and the miners lie
In roads that never saw sun or sky
Roads
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/u/u2/springhill_mining_disaster.html ]
Bono: "Shut up for a second, will you? Stop whistling 'cause I'm not in the Beatles, okay? It's U2 here."
In the town of Springhill
They don't sleep easy
Often the earth will tremble and roll
When the earth is restless
Miners die
Bone and blood is the price of coal
Bone and blood is the price of coal
Listen to the shouts of the black faced miner
Listen to the call of the rescue team
We have no water, light or bread
So we're living on songs and hope instead
Living on songs and hope instead
In the town of Springhill Nova Scotia
Down in the dark of the Cumberland mine
There's blood on the coal, and the miners lie
In roads that never saw sun or sky
Roads that never saw sun nor sky
In the town of Springhill
Don't sleep easy
Often the earth will tremble and roll
When the earth is restless
Miners die
Bone and blood is the price of coal
Bone and blood is the price of coal
Bone and blood is the price of coal
This reads like the transcript of the u2 performance i attended in worchester ma many years ago. I remember bono talking about the song before performing it. My ears perked up because my great uncle, bill turnbull was one of the miners who died in the '58 bump. I was so suprised to hear u2 was going to sing a tribute to that disaster which had personal meaning to me. I also remember bono stopping the song to tell the crowd to shut up - i agreed with him; he was trying to honor those who died, but the crowd just wanted entertainment. He performed the song and then moved on to the more "popular" tunes. Since then, i've had a soft spot for u2.
Actually this song predates u2 by several decades. I remeber it being performed by the cbc's singalong jubilee chorus sometime in the early 60's and a nova scotia blue grass band had a version of it out with in couple weeks of the actuall disaster. Like many, if not all, disaster songs this one is a commerative or memorial for the men who died in the disaster. Springhill nova scotia (more recently home of anne murray) is still a coaling town and could again face the same kind of bump which flattened the cumberland in 1958.