This is a documentary film by Philip Donnellan based on a 1960s Radio Ballad called `The Big Hewer' by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and Charles Parker. British coalminers have many stories of a legendary hero known by various names, including Temple, Tempest, Jackie Torr, Bob Towers, and, in Wales, Isaac Lewis. He is also known as "The Great Miner" or "The Big Hewer". He is to the British coalfields what Paul Bunyan was to the US logging camps and John Henry to the African American railway builders. The Big Hewer radio ballad and film makes it clear that the subject matter was not mining as such but a man who was a miner - an important distinction.

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