Hello Mudcatters,

It's been a while since I posted anything to Mudcat. I wnet back to this old thread and thought I'd update it with the song I eventually finished and recorded on a self produced CD titled "From Hell to Breakfast." Here is the song, of course all copyrights would apply, but permission to use it is normally granted to those polite enough to ask.

MOLLY MAGUIRES
(Rick Boyle)

My father died in a workhouse.
My mother slowly starved away at home
From a mudfloor cottage in the hills of Donegal,
My brother, sister and I set out to find the world alone.
My sister took a boat to Scotland
My brother and I a ship to Amerikay
Now my sister's a whore in GlasgowTown
And my brother died along the way.....to Amerikay...

No work or prospects, I landed in New York
No freinds or family a stranger on your shore
When a Dublin man came up and offered me a job
To wear a Union army uniform
They gave me a gun and a shovel
Taught me how to march in a straight line
On a sunken road on a farm in Maryland
They sent me out to die.....They left me there to die...

So, I came here to Pennsylvania.
Came here to work at picking coal.
Sorting shale by hand in a hole a mile deep
Waist deep in water as black as my soul
For fifteen years I work down in their mines
Spent half my life bringing up their iron ore
Paid a slave wage for a ton of coal today
In script that went back to the company store

I saw good men die of black lung
I saw strong men crushed like coal
I saw the company repay their greiving wives
By evicting the widows and children from their homes
Then all the anger boiled over
Repaid the bosses with a hail of rifle fire
Some call me damned, some call me a murderer
Some call me Molly MacGuire

So now I sit here in this prison cell
Condemned to die with the coming of the morn
They say confess, or I'm sure to burn in hell
Well, I've been in hell since the day that I was born
I left my soul down in the coal mine
There's nothing left to burn in the heat of satan's fire
They'll forget my name and the names of those who died
But remember Molly MacGuire




Hope it lives up to Mudcat standards.

Rick Boyle

my webpage