The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #2332 Message #2156675
Posted By: chazkratz
24-Sep-07 - 07:55 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Let Her Sleep Under the Bar / Lady in Red
Subject: Lyr Add: MORE TO BE PITIED THAN CENSURED
Another song on a similar theme--more serious, but kind of 1890s bathetic--and also in Song Fest:
MORE TO BE PITIED THAN CENSURED
At the old concert hall in the Bow'ry Round a table were seated one night A group of young fellows carousing; Their outlook was carefree and bright. At the very next table was seated A young girl who'd fallen to shame; How the young fellows laughed at her downfall 'Til they heard an old lady explain:
CHORUS: She is more to be pitied than censured She is more to be helped than despised She is only a young girl who ventured Down life's stormy path ill-advised Do not scorn her with words fierce and bitter Do not laugh at her shame and downfall For a moment just stop and consider That a man was the cause of it all.
There's an old-fashioned church 'round the corner Where the neighbors all gathered one day, While the parson was preaching a sermon O'er a soul that had just passed away; 'Twas this same wayward girl from the Bow'ry Who a life of adventure had led. Did the clergyman jeer at her downfall? No! He asked for God's mercy, and said:
Not having at hand my copy of Song Fest, I wrote out the first verse and chorus from memory, then Googled the song and found the second verse in the third link--the first two being references to the murder of a pregnant young prostitute, Sarah Cornell, and the trial of the Methodist minister she implicated. After a long trial, the minister. Ephraim Avery was acquitted. This happened in Fall River, Massachusetts, where Lizzie Borden was acquitted of taking an ax to her father and mother--and where the Catholic bishop a few years ago refused to grant a dispensation for his Irish parishioners to eat corned beef on St. Patrick's Day--so many of them rented a bus to travel to New York where the bishop did allow the consumption of the traditional feast. This event inspired a Mudcat song challenge.