Our Singing Country

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Our Singing Country
THE COAL MINER'S CHILD
ab. No. 2557. Aunt Molly Jackson, New York City, 1939. See Cox, p. 4465 Ja.2, p. 485 Sc.2, p. 364.
"This song is a true story concerning a Harlan County miner's child. The miner was killed in the fall-like, and the mother of the child then died in the winter-like in 1928. The same day that the mother was buried', why, this child went to a rich coal operator's house and asked him to give her a home or prepare a home for her where she could have something to eat. He turned her away and thought that she'd went back in the mining camp or somewhere, and the next morning she was found dead in the hall of the house. When the handy man of the place come and reported it, why, this man told him to go and pick up her body and get it out of the way. He didn't see why that the miners' children, them coal miners' trash, should come and die on his hands. Says it looked like they could find some other place to die. And that is the story that I composed this song from."
-—Aunt Molly Jackson.
This is a version of the old sentimental ballad, "The Orphan Girl," Moderately slow, free J = 96 $            2                        ^