All Pig Iron
i.m. Lonnie Donnegan

How many boys in cold front rooms,
Their fingers, crippled spiders, stumbling on
Steel strings, brass fretwire, fumbled for three chords:  
E, A, B7, scribbling down the words  
On Lion writing pads?  
           I got pigs, I got geese,  
I got pigs, I got all pig iron, I got all pig iron.
‘Cos the Rock Island Line is a mighty fine line.
The Rock Island Line is the road to ride.

Cold front-room dreams,  
As before the living room fire,
Dozing fathers dreamed to Billy Cotton,
Red sails met the sunset,  
And, in steam-filled kitchens, mothers beat  
The gravy free of lumps.

Cold front-room dreams. You gave the children of
The suburbs and the post-war slums
Swagger; brought to Burnley’s cobbled streets
And Surbitons mock Tudor towers,
The mud stink of the levee:
Sylvie bringing a little water;
The old engineer, his hand on the airbrake
Scalded to death by the steam;
In bare-bulb, damp, church-halls across this wintry land,
Washboards and tea-chests thumped their way
To the Cumberland Gap, and a thousand Lost Johns
Started putting on the style. We built the Coolee Dam,
Fought The Battle of New Orleans;
Nobody’s children in cold front rooms,
We were given dreams to dream.