The Molly Maguires: A Ballad

I will sing of Molly Maguire:

Come down to the pits of coal.

We’ll weep for Molly Maguire

And those good Irish boys of old.

Their axes dug the anthracite

That burned so hard and long.

They worked to death for petty coins;

The foremen done them wrong.

The blackness ruined lungs and breath,

Men worked their flesh to bone.

They dug their Catholic souls to death;

They’d die in the darkness alone.

For tons of coal were in the ground,

And Irish lives were cheap.

Their coal would fill the furnace and

The owners pockets so deep.

When a man could take no more,

Needed more than whiskey and piss,

He’d join the Molly Maguires:

A man would raise his fist.

They burned the company office down,

They cracked the foreman’s head.

When company men came lookin’ around

They knifed the bastards dead.

The Pinkertons came in October

When the moneyed men had enough.

They got more than just the Mollies:

Beat ‘em and shot ’em and cuffed.

They hanged the Molly Maguires

Before that year’s first snow.

Judge doomed each man on the docket

Whether he was a Molly or no.

Ghosts pace in the cells where they held them,

The hole where they broke ’em of hope.

Ghosts gaze at the beams of the rafters

Where they broke their necks with the rope.

And the Irish, they suffered and hungered

And struggled on down in the mines.

And the owners still lined their silk pockets

Just like they did beforetimes.

Let us sing of Molly Maguire:

Come down to the pits of coal.

We’ll drink to Molly Maguires,

All those good Irish boys of old.

Multiple liberties taken - in a folk song, shouldn't they be? - but here's a bit of history for the curious: https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-3B9