I was an unmarried girl / I’d 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 come here pregnant / Some by their own fathers / Bridget got that belly / By her parish priest

We’re trying to get things 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 / Then they’d know, and 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 drain / At 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 / That never blooms come any spring, come any spring / No, not any spring…

[By Joni Mitchell © Crazy Crow Music / Reprise Records, 1994]