Chords for Joni Mitchell - The Magdalene Laundries (Live Toronto 1994)

_ Yes, I want [F] to know what inspired Magdalene Laundries.
Oh, well, I live in British Columbia as much as I possibly can.
Because I'm absent, sometimes I have a man named Hans who, he and his family care take my place.
And Hans sucking on his pipe said to me [E] one day,
you know, Joni, you're basically a cheerful person, but you write these melancholy songs.
He said, seems to me that you should write more in the daylight, you're always writing at night.
So I sat out in the sun on a rock and I tuned my guitar to the sound of that day
because I play in open tunings like ragas.
So I tuned to the crows and the seagulls and the sonic references available.
And it was a fairly cheerful chord [A] progression.
_ _ _ [C#m] _
_ [E] You know, well, a little melancholy in [A] it because beauty has little.
But [N] _ anyway, I intended to write quite a cheery lyric to it.
Well, I went to the supermarket to get my groceries and standing in the line
between the Enquirer and the Star was the Vancouver Sun.
_ And I never bought a paper in my life, what possessed me, I don't know.
But I picked this paper up and I never got past the first page.
To the left hand of the page was a story out of Ireland that the sisters of Our Lady of Charity
outside of Dublin, which was a nunnery, had sold 11 and a half acres to realtors.
The realtors in ploughing this land for development unearthed over a hundred bodies and unmarked graves.
_ _ Thus opening up a scandal that had rocked Dublin from, they said, 1800 to 1970.
These laundries were closed.
Basically the Magdalene laundries, which stood outside of every major Irish town
and maybe some minor ones, _ _ _ employed, well, employed, took as slave labor fallen women.
Fallen women were classified as the obvious, I guess, prostitutes, _ _ _
unmarried mothers, frequently impregnated by their parish priest, their father, their brother.
But the worst of all was that an unmarried woman in her late twenties,
if the men of the village were looking at her, she could be deemed a Jezebel by the parishioners
and even her own family for her indecisiveness in choosing a mate.
And incarcerated for life, or at least until somebody managed to get her out of there.
This was cheap labor.
Dickensian conditions was the way it was described.
Well, you know, _ there went my cheerful song.
So, I mean, _ this is the story of the Magdalene laundries.
[A] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Bm] _ [A] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ [Bm] _ [C#] _ _ [E] _ [D] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ [D] _
[A] _ _ [E] _ _ _ [Am] _ [F#m] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
I was an unmarried girl.
_ [Bm] _
I'd [E] just turned 27.
[B] _ [A] _ _ _
When they sent me to the sisters [E] for the way men looked at [C#m] me.
_ [A] _ [D] _ _
_ Branded as a Jezebel, [E] I knew I was not bound for heaven.
_ _ [A] I'd be cast in shame into the _ Magdalene [Bm] _
laundries.
_ _ _ [F#m] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
Most girls come here pregnant, [E] _ _
some by their own fathers.
_ [A] _ _ _
_ _ Bridget got that belly [Bm] by [E] her parish priest.
_ [B] _ [A] _ [D] _
We're trying to get things white as [Em] snow.
All of us [B] woe [E] begotten daughters.
_ [A] In the steaming [E] steams of the _ [Am] Magdalene [F#m]
laundry. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ [A] Prostitutes and [E] destitutes and _ temptresses [F#m] like me.
_ _ [D] _
_ Fallen women [E] sentenced into dreamless treachery.
_ _ _ _ _ [D] _
Why do they call this [E] heartless place our lady of charity?
_ _ [A] Oh, _ [D] _
charity.
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
These bloodless brides of Jesus, if [E] they had just once glimpsed their room, then they'd [A] know. _
And they'd drop those stones concealed behind [B] their rosaries.
_ _ [C#m] _ _ _ [A] _ _
They wilt the grass they walk upon.
[E] They leach the light out of a room.
_ _ [Bm] They'd like [D] to drive us down the [E] drain at the [A] _ Magdalene _ [F#m]
laundries. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
Peg O'Connell died today.
_ [C#m] _
[E] She was a cheeky girl.
Flirt.
They [Bm] just stuffed her in a [A] hole.
_ _ Surely to God you'd think at least [C#m] some bells should ring.
_ _ [Bm] _ [A] _ [D] _
One day I'm gonna die here [E] too.
And they'll plant me in the dirt.
[B] _ _ [D] Like some lame bulb that [E] never blooms come any [Bm] spring.
_ [E] Oh, not [A] _
any spring.
_ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Bm] _ _ [F#] _
[Bm] _ _ _ [F#m] _ _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ Not any spring.
_ _ [D] _ _ _ Not any [A] spring.
_ [D] _ _ [A] _ Not any spring.
[D] _ _ _ [A] _ [D] Not any spring. _ _ _ _ _ _
[N] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _