Tuesday, September 2, 2014

New Songs to Old Tunes 2

I love the Northumbrian pipe melody of "Kielder Hunt". I've been trying to write a song about Orton Farmer's Market, but it just refuses to go with the haunting tune.

But passing Lune's Bridge on the way to choir the other night I remembered the morning of Sunday 15th February 2004: when our little local road became busy with traffic diverted off the A685, which was closed while emergency services dealt with 4 dead and 5 injured men from the Tebay railway accident. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tebay_rail_accident

Here's a fragment of the tune, sung by Willie Scott, which is more or less as it's sung by the hunters in Cumbria. http://www.virginmedia.com/music/browse/willie-scott/songs/249399

And here are my lyrics to it, about the railway accident.

Lune's Bridge

The night is cold in Tebay Gorge, the wind is keening sore
in the February darkness of the year two thousand-four.
The railway lads are set to work between mid-night and morn,
from Saturday the fourteenth to the Sunday's frozen dawn.
Gone away, gone away,
out of Scout Green down to Tebay, gone away.


The scrappers' gang is working up the trackside at Scout Green,
unloading sixteen tons of steel from a flat-bed truck by crane.
And down at Lunesbridge level there's a cutting gang as well
who work by floodlight through the night, at the south end of Loups Fell.Gone away, gone away,
out of Scout Green down to Tebay, gone away.


The Scout Green truck has got no brake, she’s stayed on wooden blocks;
the crane unloading jerks her from her feeble wooden chocks.
With sixteen tons of rusty rail she runs from where she parked
and down the one in seventy-five goes rumbling through the dark.Gone away, gone away,
out of Scout Green down to Tebay, gone away.


She'll clear the cut at Scotchman's Bridge, the bank above Low Scales,
Low Greenholme's airy viaduct and Loups Fell's trembling rails.
Get out your phone and make the call to warn the Lunesbridge crew -
Tell Tindall, Buckley, Burgess, Jump and go, she's bound for you.
Gone away, gone away,
out of Scout Green down to Tebay, gone away.


All sixteen tons down seventy-five is killing weight indeed;
that minute while you try to call builds up her deadly speed.
The cutters of the Lunesbridge gang they fall without a cry;
she throws five men from out her path and sends four more to die.
Gone away, gone away,
out of Scout Green down to Tebay, gone away.


In vain the phones are ringing now; an answer cannot come,
for Waters', Buckley's, Burgess, Tindall's time on earth is done.
No monument can bring them back, no killer's years in jail.
Remember, when you pass Lune's Bridge, the men who mend the rail.
Gone away, gone away,
out of Scout Green down to Tebay, gone away.




1 comment:

Brian said...

I remember hearing with disbelief the news of that fateful night. I worked with Gary Tindall many times over my 9 years on the railway. It was doubly sad when his wife Christine died of cancer just 7 months later. So sad.