1913 Massacre - Christy Moore

Take a trip with me to 1913

Down to Michigan and the Copper Country

I’ll take you to a place called Italian Hall

Where the miners are having their big Christmas ball

I’ll take you through a door and up a high stairs

Singing and dancing is heard everywhere

I’ll let you shake hands with the people you see

Watch the kids dancing round the big Christmas tree

You talk about work and you talk about pay

They tell you they make less than a dollar a day

Working their copper claims risking their lives

So it’s fun to spend Christmas with their children and wives

A little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lights

To play the piano so you have to be quiet

To watch all the fuss you don’t realize

The copper boss’s scabs they are waiting outside

And one of them scabs puts his head round the door

And he yells and he screams and he roars there’s a fire

A woman she hollered there’s no such a thing

Keep on with your party there’s no such a thing

But a few people move, there was only a few

It’s only them scabs and them thugs fooling you

A man grabbed his daughter and he carried her down

But the scabs held the door, they couldn’t get out

Then more people followed a hundred or more

Till almost everyone left the floor

But the scabs they kept on with their murderous joke

The children were smothering on the stairs by the door

Such a terrible sight I never did see

They carried them back to the big Christmas tree

Them scabs they still laughed at their murderous spree

The children that died numbered seventy-three

The piano plays a slow funeral tune

And the town is lit up by a cold Christmas moon

The women they cry, the men they mourn

See what your greed for the money has done

Yes the women they cry, the men they mourn

See what your greed for the money has done