The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #5905   Message #1024049
Posted By: GUEST,Joe McParland
23-Sep-03 - 10:22 PM
Thread Name: Songs about Molly Maguires
Subject: RE: Molly Maguires: Songs about?
Changing the words of the song is in line, of course, with the recent revisionist trend to try to re-write the history of the Molly Maguires. For anyone who actually knows the history, it is utterly foolish to equate the Molly Maguires with "a dawning of freedom for the working man." The Mollies' defense lawyers tried to paint their clients as union men, but the real miners union in Pennsylvania (the WBA founded by John Siney) did everything it could to disassociate itself from the Molly Maguire violence and condemned the Mollies at every turn. The Mollies were hanged for cold-blooded murder, not for organizing strikes. It is a pity so many coal miners have identified themselves with a group of Irish saloonkeepers running their own little version of a Murder, Inc.