Aberfan - original song - © Dave Collins

This song is about the tragic events that took place in Aberfan, Wales in October 1966. I had finished my degree at Aberystwyth a few months earlier. Fifteen years later I accepted the painful task of writing a song on the subject, at the request of a Welsh lady who heard me singing at a folk club. The song took a year to write. The lady died in the meanwhile, and never heard the finished song.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Aberfan
• Disaster
• Original Song
• Singer/Songwriter
• Creative Commons

[lilymonsterbold]

I just had an English lesson about the aberfan disaster, This song is reall moving

[davecollinsmusic]

@lilymonsterbold Nice comment. Thanks Lily.

[bettinageorgii]

Preparing an English lesson for my 14 year old pupils in a German Grammar school and stepping into the Aberfan disaster once again with all the compassion I can have as a mother of 3 and one who was born in 1966. Thank you for these wonderful lyrics and your wonderful song giving a voice to the incommunicable bereavement. Having heard your song (and my explanation), my youngest daughter (7) decided that we must go to Aberfan one day to visit the dead children...

[davecollinsmusic]

@bettinageorgii

I am very touched by your kind and generous comments. Thank you.

[chlgeuter]

@davecollinsmusic Did you write this song? Very beautiful.

[davecollinsmusic]

@chlgeuter Thanks Christian. Yes I did. After all these years, it's still inexpressibly sad to revisit this tragic event, but at least it means the children of Aberfan are not forgotten.

[pjr9532]

i certainly won't forget aberfan.i can remember our headmistress at school telling us about what had happened there.we said prayers at assemly for the people killed,mostly for the children.aged 4 we could'nt understand how a mountain could fall on a school...terrible thing,will never forget

[MrMagpie52]

Having visited the memorial i could not keep a dry I and never heard a bird sing was the price of coal really worth this and what has an English government done to a proud mining family HOW MANY MINES now MAGGIE