TRUE boy..named Edmond M'Hale I think...from County Mayo. They searched his coat when he died and found the three grains of corn. The coronorer's report made it to a New York Newspaper and I think an Iowa? newspaper in the obituaries...the song or the words anyway were written by an Ameilia??? in 1847 as the famine was going on.

I can't think of other songs really but someone should write one based on words of Pope John Paul (I)..he lived in mountains of Italy after WWI and wrote about a cart that used to come by in the early morning and pick up the frozen orphans who had died in the night.

Oh..orphan songs..there are some great orphan train songs...

Well, actually I have one..probably have posted it but I will write it up here...based on Dalit girls in India having to beg for water..tune is old Irish Connemara by the lake...

Dalit water song

Please won't you share your water with me
For us it's forbidden for you it is free
Perhaps just a dipper perhaps just a cup
if you gave me a barrel I could drink it all up

When the monsoon comes down from the sky it does fall
down upon one and down upon all
the rain does not ask what religion or race
it comes to us all with such goodness and grace

My father is forty my mother is thirty
They have never drunk water that hasn't been dirty
They have never had water to wash all the stains
Of the work they must do so the stigma remains

we could fill many wells with all of our tears
but when we grow up we will be engineers
with pure clean water, we will favor the earth
and deny it to no one because of their birth



CHORUS
draw the water up from the well
we are so thirsty too thirsty to tell
we can't drink the dust and we can't drink the air
so draw up the water and give us our share

last chorus
draw up the water we'll give you our share


Actually, here is another for boys who were sexually abused in Mount Cashel orphanage, Newfoundland. Tune is Patriot Game

BOYS OF MOUNT CASHEL

The boys of Mount Cashel lie wetting their beds
They wait in the dark for the footsteps they dread
Too stunned and ashamed to show where they have bled
The boys of Mount Cashel are crying tonight

The fine Christian Brothers so saintly we thought
Some really were and some really not
They'd have gone on forever except they got caught
The boys of Mount Cashel are crying tonight

The men of Mount Cashel are going berserk
Raring to throttle each pitiful jerk
But the magistrates say let the law do its work
The boys of Mount Cashel are crying tonight

Lives without promise, lives without hope
How they must hate us how will they cope
I will follow this trail if it leads to the pope
The boys of Mount Cashel are crying tonight

I want to be there when the blame comes around
Sure there's plenty enough for us all to be found
And I pray to high heavens that God hears the sound
Of the boys of Mount Cashel who are crying tonight


Hopefully, there are some happy songs that emerge...nobody in my village has polio anymore...malaria nets are working...we have clean water now etc.

Also, I am trying, very unsuccessfully, to put out a CD with girls from all over..age 10-14..singing encouraging hopeful songs for each other..must have no copyright issues, no politics, religion, descriptions of trauma...PM for more details. I am not getting anything in from my friends in US and Canada but I hate to cancel because girls from Poland and Kenya and Mexico are working on it.