Senghenydd Explosion - Here Be Dragons

On the fourteenth day of October

In the year 1913

At the Lancaster pit Senghenydd

Hundreds worked the black seam

Harry Wedlock was starting his first day at work

A young lad just fourteen years old

He heard a sound from under the ground

And the blood in his body ran cold

A mighty explosion deep in the mine

Spat the pit-cage out into the air

Young Harry started to cry

Confused, frightened and scared

One of the miners stopped him from crying

Told him to be brave and be strong

He said be tonight it’ll all be alright

He couldn’t have been more wrong

Say four hundred and thirty nine prayers for the dead

Or there won’t be enough to go round

For fathers and brothers and husbands and sons

Claimed by the cold dark ground

A terrible fire swept through the mine

Spreading fear and panick and death

If fire underground doesn’t burn you

It may still steal your last breath

The desperate one the families and friends

Prayed their husbands and sons and dads weren’t amoung

The four hundred and thirty nine dead

Forty five died from Commercial Street

From High Street thirty five

Mrs Benjamin Preist lost her husband

She’s had two sons, nethier survived

Mrs Twinings' three were amoung the young men

Killed that day at the black seam

Sixty all told less than twenty years old

Eight of them only fourteen