The Men They Couldn't Hang - Rain, Steam and Speed video free download

promo video from the single release in 1989

Lyrics:

One man drills a powder hole,

the colour of a bruise

One man blows the bugle and another

one lights the fuse

Blow up! Pick and shovel it!

Carry the earth away

Brains and brawn with hammers

drawn blasting through the clay

Rain is the cold

Steam is the burn

Speed is the way the world turns round

Draughtsmen and surveyors

work at pegging out the shaft

Ten of us to breathe the dust,

ten to do the graft

Underneath the Pennine range

the bodies lie in racks

Forty miles of steel and tile

follow in their tracks

Some men build a monument

Some men build a tomb

Some men move the world around

To give them breathing room

And some men build a statue

Of Isambard Brunel

Some men carve a tunnel into hell

Soon they'll build a tunnel under England

through to France

Will it make the tide run quicker;

will the flow of trade advance?

Underneath the ocean there is limestone,

chalk and sand

But coming up through the virgin rock

will be the human hand

(straight out of Paul Simmonds' 'Bag of Songs')

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