Winter Sun

Contemporary Scots singers Gill Bowman and Karine Polwart’s haunting song about the life of a female coal miner in the early 19th century.
 [bad word] 
Girlhood days are done
Now she'll never feel the summer rain ‘til [bad word] underground
Never see a winter sun
And never question that the likes of her are bound
Bound before her birth, faither paid tae tie his family
Worked them half tae death, aff the day level mine
And she cairried coals and climbed, up the stair and doon the ladder
Shifting mair than fifteen ton afore she was nine
Darker than the night were the days that she endured
She never learned tae write, but she kent aw her psalms
And the oors were lang and drear, breathing in the foul carbolic
Wishing for a lad [bad word] and take her in his arms
Mairried for her strength, mair than for her passing beauty,
Wrocht wi him the length o the dark, dusty seams 
For a man must hae a wife tae cairry creels and redd the coals
And raise the bonnie bairnies that will haunt her dreams
Since her man was taen, still she's had tae work her seam
And leave the youngest bairn by the dark stoop side 
And she gies the bairn the breast, cauld stoved tatties tae the rest
Starts her auldest lassie working by her side