Mother Jones – her spirit roams
Wherever mining kills
Colorado Cripple Creek
West Virginia Hills
Dressed in black she walks the path
Where grapes of wrath have grown
Born & bred in County Cork
Yet every-where’s her home
Chorus:
No more deaths for dollars
Price too high for coal
Mother Jones still hollers
Way down in the hole
Mother Jones where do you go?
Well I go where I choose
Mother Jones where do you live?
I live in my shoes
Raised some hell where my feet fell
Faced thugs and iron rain
Mother Sorrow took my kids
The miners eased my pain
Mother Jones who are these kids?
Who march along with you
These are children Roosevelt
Keeps caged in a zoo
Silk mill slaves whose early graves
Get closer every day
They give their tomorrow now
For what you have today
Miners’ angel Mother Jones
No angel of the skies
She stood on a mountaintop
Helped them organise
When the strike was on she’d lead
The women and she’d say
“Beat the tin cans louder girls
Those mules won’t scab today!”
Mother Jones – her spirit roams
Like Johnny Appleseed
She takes root and she bears fruit
Where there is a need
Knights of Labor - days of hope
Never tires of giving
Prays for dead cut down by lead
And fights like hell for living
Ending:
Figures lie and liars figure
The maker rarely owns
We need light and we need fight
And we need Mother Jones
