The Navigator's Bride

The Navigator’s Bride

Bella Hardy. The Cowburn railway tunnel runs under the hills at the west end of Edale. It’s over 3km long, and very deep, with a ventilation shaft on the moor. In the late 19th century, 500 navigators arrived in Edale to build the tunnel and stayed for some years. It must have been an incredible time for the valley and its residents, of whom there were just over 300.

 

 

I’d swear the earth moved beneath my own two feat

On the hillside near that hell below

Hear the shouting that echoes up the dale

If my love survives or dies today I do not know

 

Like an army they came, and the swarmed my father’s fields

Built their ragged shanty tent town home

The railway navigators come to burrow through our hills

Five hundred wandering men where only sheep did roam

 

Never met an Irish man until the navvies came

When I saw him washing by my riverside

His song so sweet I just had to know his name

Now my heart won’t rest ’til I’m the navigator’s bride

 

The villagers say that we all should stay away

That they’re foul degenerates and all of them the same

But these snobs turn up Sundays, wagers on the fighting games

For the crime and gambling who shares the greatest blame?

 

Oh the living is hard, seems the drinking’s harder still

But there’s none can deny that these are men of might and will

And with gunpowder, pick and shovel, strength and skill

So abused, these proud men dig your precious tunnel still

 

So clouds cover the moon, in a week’s time we’ll be gone

My love’s heard of a new town for hardworking men like him

I’ll say farewell dear home, and I’ll follow to the place

Where a shepherd’s daughter and a navvy might fit in

 

Oh but I’d swear the earth just moved beneath my own two feet

And there’s tales of running sands, men buried down below

Do you hear the shouting that echoes up the dale?

And if my love survives or dies today I do not know