Magdalene Laundries from Hlywing by Ruth Angell
This song is by the wonderful Joni Mitchell who I have admired for much of my life. It’s from her album Turbulent Indigo released in 1994. It was written in response to the horrors that women in Ireland suffered from 1922 - 1996. As an unmarried mother at the time of the birth of my own son in 2012 and as a women in today’s society I can relate to some of what Joni sings about here. Empathy for the fallen woman, the unmarried mother, the flirtatious, the beautiful, the different and the rebellious. Hlywing means ‘shelter’ in the Old Medieval English language and the Magdalene laundries are this horrific, desperate, prisons for women at the time purporting to be some kind of shelter for them maybe like some of the Refugee shelters we see today. So many women died in these institutions and those that managed to escape were completely unprepared for life in the real world. I am so grateful to Joni Mitchell’s management for granting us permission to include my version of this song on the album.
Tracklist
| 7. | Magdalene Laundries | 3:49 |
Lyrics
I was an unmarried girl
Just turned twenty - seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a Jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I’d be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries
Most girls got here pregnant
Some by their own fathers
Bridget got that belly by her parish priest
We’re trying to wash things as white as snow
All of us woe-begotten-daughters
In the streaming stains
Of the Magdalene laundries
Prostitutes and destitutes
And temptresses like me
Fallen women sentenced
Into dreamless drudgery
Why do they call this heartless place
Our Lady of Charity?
Oh, charity
These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
They’d drop the stones concealed
Behind their rosaries
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They’d like to drive us down the drains
Of the Magdalene laundries
Peg O’Connell died today
She was a cheeky girl, a flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole
Surely to God you’d think at least
Some bells should ring!
One day I’m going to die here too
And they’ll plant me in the dirt like some lame bulb
Never to bloom
When the Spring time comes
Spring time comes
