Key:
Introduction:
C Am D G
Marie Farrar. Orphaned minor
C Am D G
Rickets. Birthmarks none
C Am D G
Admits that she did kill her child
C Am D G
As follows here in summary
(Sung)
C Am D G
She visited a woman in a basement
C Am D G
When she was two months gone, as she reports it
C Am D G
And she had two injections there
C Am D G
Which hurt so bad but they did not abort it
C/B Am F
And you I beg make not your anger manifest
C/B Am F
For all that live need help from all the rest
C Am D G
Nonetheless she paid her bill
C Am D G
Returned to work to scrub the floor and wash the plates
C Am D G
She knew that she would soon begin to show
C Am D G
She prayed to Mary, her hopes were great
C Am D G
Then on that morning six months later
C Am D G
As she began to scrub the stairs
C Am D G
A pain came clawing into her guts
C Am D G
She knew the thing would soon be there
C/B Am F
And you I beg make not your anger manifest
C/B Am F
For all that live need help from all the rest
C Am D G
She worked until after ten
C Am D G
She could not give birth in peace until the household slept
C Am D G
Then she bore a son like any mother's son
C Am D G
While she, now a mother, wept
C Am D G
For she was not like other mothers are
C Am D G
But there are no valid grounds why we should mock her
C Am D G
Then the child began to cry
C Am D G
Which vexed her, so she said
C Am D G
She beat it with her fists both blind and wild
C Am D G
Til it was quiet and it was dead
C Am D G
She took the body into bed
C Am D G
Slept with it for the rest of the night
C Am D G
And in the morning when the household was out
C Am D G
She hid it in the laundry shed where it was out of sight
C/B Am F
And you I beg make not your anger manifest
C/B Am F
For all that live need help from all the rest
C Am D G
Marie Farrar died in a penitentiary
C Am D G
An unwed mother judged by law
C Am D G
And she will show how all that lives, lives frailly
C Am D G
And you who bear your sons in laundered linen sheets
C Am D G
And speak of your pregnancies as a blessed state
C Am D G
She never damned the outcast and the weak
C Am D G
Her sin was heavy, her sorrow great
C Am D G
Her sin was heavy, her sorrow great