Run for Your Life

DESCRIPTION: "Didn't know Flynn? Flynn of Offaly, 'S long as he's been here?" "Here in this tunnel he was my partner, That same Tom Flynn." He holds back the "timbers ready to fall" in the mine, crying "Run for your life, Jake... Don't wait for me, And that was all"
AUTHOR: Bret Harte (as "In the Tunnel")
EARLIEST DATE: 1871 (Poems by Bret Harte)
KEYWORDS: death mining escape
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Colquhoun-NZ-Folksongs-SongOfAYoungCountry, p. 77, "Run for Your Life" (1 text, 1 modern tune) (p. 56 in the 1972 edition)
RECORDINGS:
Bruce Hall, "Run for Your Life" (on NZSongYngCntry)
NOTES [218 words]: Mitch Park writes to me with the following information about the source of this song: "This was originally collected in a field trip through the poetry columns of old newspapers, and I presume the documentation was a bit skimpy. Since those papers have been digitised as part of the Papers Past archive, it was easy to find the original poem, with its original title and author.
"Papers Past shows NZ publication under the title 'In the tunnel,' in the Mount Ida Chronicle 29 Sep 1871 ('by the author of "The heathen Chinee"'), then later in the Cromwell Argus 7 Nov 1871, where it was attributed to Bret Harte. It was published in 'Poems by Bret Harte.' - Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1871, which is the obvious source for the newspaper reprint.
"Colquhoun's version substitutes Offaly for Virginia, and the album notes [to the reissue of NZSongYngCntry] comment that the poem probably refers to the goldfield at Surface Hill near Naseby. There were indeed a number of deaths on the Surface Hill claims. But all were attributable to earthfall during hydraulic mining in which powerful jets of water were directed at rather loose alluvial deposits; no tunnelling involved."
Harte's original poem had six irregular stanzas. The Colquhoun version chops off the last two and a bit, and is probably better for it. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.4
File: Colq056

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