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The Ballad of Agnes Turley

from A Tale of Two Cities by Daniel J Townsend

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The feature song from episode 5 of Daniel's album-podcast, A Tale of Two Cities. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

lyrics

My lineage landed unloved on the sand
Where the ocean of peace meets the prisoners’ land
Fifteen and female, a heart full of fear,
Locked in the dark with her womb

Her pa had his roots down
In the same Scottish farming town all his ancestors had done
Where sometimes the weather
Is more than the gathering rain and the heat of the sun
He’d tried to dig down through the icy ground
But sometimes the snow takes it all
The edge of the Empire, the end of an age
Those cities were hungry and tall

The lords and the ladies,
Their lazy laws blaming the poor for their hunger and thirst
Each day a reminder:
Tomorrow is blind. Each night is the end of a world
Her father was desperate,
They’d all heard the whispering promise of work in the towns
So they left the fields empty
At night she dreamt she was dressed in a flowing white gown

Green was the meadow
Blue were her eyes
Dream of tomorrow
Golden with the light

Choking on smoke, clouds in her throat
Sky in the eyes of a girl
Frail as a flower, cold shadows of towers
Grey as the end of the world
Brothers and broth without bread
And young moths to the glow of the smelter alight
Sisters assisting their ashen-faced siblings
Alone with no shelter at night
Children in chimneys, chasing the sun
With their Icarus broom handle wings
Breathing black air, with no shoes to wear
And their legs all broom handle thin
Fifteen and female and hungry as fear
She could hear the men thinking as she walked too near
In her rags like a dress – they’d imagine the rest –
And her sweet legs so broom handle thin

My ancestor ran by the hands of the factory
Nervous, in search of a coat or a cloak
Just to cover herself, with no clothes on the shelf
She entered the house that she broke
A tiny young thing, underage, underdressed
Clenching her fists to her chest
She was seen in the street and placed under arrest
Clutching that pretty white dress

Green was the meadow
Blue were her eyes
Dream of tomorrow
Golden with the light

She stood in the courthouse, a lamb to the slaughter
A man with four daughters before her in robes
Took one look through her, spoke, then they threw her
To the opposite side of the globe
One hundred and fifty souls wondering the old
Ocean would swallow them whole
Girls and young women, some with babies within them
Pretty maids all in a row

My lineage lay there, unloved on the floor
Chained to a stranger, a prisoner of war
And wondered just what it all could be for
Locked in the dark with her womb

At night she dreamed of meadows of green
And a gentleman in suit and vest
Holding her hand, foreign land,
She was standing proud in a pretty white dress
Proud in a pretty white dress

credits

from A Tale of Two Cities, released December 30, 2018
Produced by Broadwing

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Daniel J Townsend TAS, Australia

"A head full of stories, a soul old enough to have lived them, and a heart young enough to believe in their power to move us."

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