Select language to translate this lyric
Come gather 'round friends
And I'll tell you a tale
Of when the red iron armpits ran plenty
But the cardboard filled windows
And old men on the benches
Tell you now that the whole town is empty
In the north end of town
My own children have grown
Well I was raised on the other
In the wee hours of youth
My mother took sick
And I was brought up by my brother
The iron ore poured
As the years passed the door
The drag lines an' the shovels they was a-humming
Till one day my brother
Failed to come home
The same as my father before him
Well a long winter's wait
From the window I watched
My friends they couldn't have been kinder
And my schooling was cut
As I quit in the spring
To marry John Thomas, a miner
Oh the years passed again
And the givin' was good
With the lunch bucket filled every season
What with three babies born
The work was cut down
To a half a day's shift with no reason
Then the shaft was soon shut
And more work was cut
And the fire in the air, it felt frozen
Till a man come to speak
And he said in one week
That number eleven was closin'
They complained, in the east
They are paying too high
They say that your ore ain't worth digging
That it's much cheaper down
In the South American towns
Where the miners work almost for nothing
So the mining gates locked
And the red iron rotted
And the room smelled heavy from drinking
And the sad, silent song
Made the hour twice as long
As I waited for the sun to go sinking
I lived by the window
As he talked to himself
This silence of tongues it was building
Then one morning's wake
The bed it was bare
And I was left alone with three children
The summer is gone
The ground's turning cold
The stores one by one they're a foldin'
My children will go
As soon as they grow
Well, there ain't nothing here now to hold them
- Album:
- The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert
- Minneapolis Hotel Tape & The Gaslight Cafe
- Fallen Angels
- Shadows in the Night
- GASLIGHT, NYC, SEPT. 6TH, 1961
- The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait...
- Tempest
- Miscellaneous
- Before The Flood
- Together Through Life
- Theme Time Radio Hour: The Best Of The Second Series
- Christmas In The Heart
- Modern Times
- No Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series...
- "Love and Theft"
- Live 1966-bootleg Series Vol. 4
- Time Out of Mind
- Natural Born Killers
- World Gone Wrong
- Good As I Been To You