Cora

Latin Quarter - Modern Times

Lyrics

It’s a snow-wind
She’s felt it blow for sixty years or more.
Cora and the snow-wind
Like the row-lock and the oar
Cutting through these icy waters
To find shelter and perfection and the shore.

Cora’s lived a kind of life
From downstairs maid to miner’s wife
Making sure she shined a floor
In Surrey homes before the war
She feels that snow-wind blowing.
She’s not sure where we’re going anymore.

For years past 1926
They dug the hill-sides out with picks
While still behind the iron gate
Those winding-wheels she’d come to hate
She feels that snow-wind blowing.
She thinks we might be getting there too late.

It’s a snow-wind
It blows so hard it cuts her to the bones.
Cora and the snow-wind
A women’s life is not her own
As she dives in icy waters
To find passion and survival, all alone.

Cora and the sisterhood
Less sisters now in Prims.
And it doesn’t sound the same
Without the voices for the hymns.

Song Description

For 60 years or more, an icy wind has blown Cora in the face. When she was young, she worked as a housemaid in a rich county Surrey house, south of London. Then she moved back to the north, in order to marry a coal miner. The general strike of 1926 was broken after short time, only the miners continued to strike. The employers prevented them from receiving the coal ration they were entitled to, so in order not to freeze in the winter, they dug in the hills for coal themselves. Like with the last strike in 1984/85, Cora and the other Methodist sisters stood by the coal miners. But now they are fewer of them and the songs from the hymnbook don’t sound the same anymore, with only a few voices left to sing them.

Appears On

Latin Quarter - Modern Times

Latin Quarter – Modern Times

Album

AStudio Version

Latin Quarter - Radio Africa

Latin Quarter – Radio Africa

Album

AStudio Version