Digital Tradition Mirror

The Granite Mill Fire

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

The Granite Mill Fire

Was in Fall River City
     When the people was burned and killed,
In a cotton manufactory
     Called as the Granite Mill.
At seven o'clock the firebells rang
     But oh, it was too late,
The flames they were fast spreading
     And at a rapid rate.

They were men and women there
     And children too, I'm told,
Who might have been saved from out of the flames
     If the truth was only known.
But oh, the villains that locked thc doors
     And told them to keep still,
It was the bosses and overseers
     That burning Granite Mill.

The first scene was a touching one
     From a maid so young in years,
She was standing by a window and
     Her eyes were filled with tears.
She cried, " Oh, save me! Save me! "
     She called her mother's name,
But her mother could not save her
     And she fell back in the flame.

The next scene was a horrible one
     Just as it caught my eye.
They were leaping from a window
     From up so very high,
And the only means of their escape
     Was sliding down a rope,
And just as they were half way down
     The burning strands they broke.

Christ, Christ, what a horrible mess,
     They were mangled, burned and killed,
Six stories high, and falling from
     The burning Granite Mill.
But I hope their spirits has fled
     To a better place far still,
Up high, up high, up in the sky
     Above the Granite Mill.

From Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, Creighton
Collected from Tom Henneberry, who learned this song in the 1890s,
     says it describes a  fire in Fall River, New York, of about
     that time. The locking-in aspect is reminiscent of the Triangle
     Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City. RG

DT #675
Laws G13
RG
oct96

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