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.

Charles