Save 25% off print and eBooks during Women’s History Month | Use promo code WOMEN24-FI.

X
Skip to content

Dublin Review of Books: The Sons of Molly Maguire

17th March 2015

‘THEM POOR IRISH LADS’ IN PENNSYLVANIA
Breandán Mac Suibhne

The Sons of Molly Maguire: The Irish Roots of America’s First Labor War, by Mark Bulik,Fordham University Press, 352 pp, ISBN 978-0823262236

Indade I do, sir. Will I ever forget it! A sad day it was in the hard coalfields, sir. When the hour of the hangings arrived for them poor Irish lads, the world suddenly became dark and we had to burn our lamps. It’s Black Thursday it was, sir.

The response of an elderly miner’s widow in Pennsylvania, when asked by folklorist George Korson in the 1930s if she remembered the hanging of the first batch of Molly Maguires in June 1877.

… among the McGeehan clan in County Donegal, the story is still recounted of the family’s gathering around the kitchen table on that day in 1877. Hugh McGeehan had written them of his innocence and asked them to pray for him. And, so the story

READ FULL REVIEW

Follow Fordham Press’s board Luck of the Irish on Pinterest.