Song of relatively recent date, "in the folk idiom", to a rousing tune -- always liked by me: concerning the building of the Settle & Carlisle route.
In the year of '69 they planned to run a train
From Settle to Carlisle all across the mountain range:
They employed three thousand navvies to build this mighty road --
Across the fells to Appleby, that old steam engine rolled.
CHORUS --
And it's up in the morning, lads,
In wind, snow or hail --
Put your hands to your hammers, lads
And lay another rail.
It's seventy-two miles from Settle to Carlisle,
Across the roughest country in the British Isles* --
They thought it would take four years, but it took them nearer seven,
And the first twenty miles sent four hundred men to heaven.
* factually, very dubious -- however, "poetic license" ...
They set up shanty-towns to protect them from the cold:
Inkerman, Sebastopol, and Batty Wife Hole --
And when they tired of women, and drinking of strong beer,
They took to fighting bare-fist-style, and they came from far and near.
Now when the winter came, it froze them to the floor,
It blew them off the viaducts, it killed them on Blea Moor:
Some died of the smallpox, some of cholera --
Old Chapel and St. Leonards have many buried there.
So if you ride this famous line across the heathered fells,
When crossing Ribblehead Viaduct, remember the tale I tell --
There's Mallerstang and Ais Gill, and Dentdale's lovely wilds;
And navvy lads a-slaving from Settle to Carlisle.
