You Souls Of Boston

(album: Ballads Of Sacco & Vanzetti - 1960)

You souls of Boston, bow your heads
Our two most noble sons are dead
Sacco and Vanzetti both have died
And drifted out with the Boston tide
'Twas on the outskirts of this town
Some bandits shot two pay clerks down
On old Pearl Street in South Braintree
And they grabbed that money and rolled away

Sacco and Vanzetti got arrested then
On a trolley car by the plain clothed men
Carried down to Brockton jail
And laid away in a lonesome cell

The folks in Plymouth town did say
Vanzetti sold fish in Suassos Lane
His fish cart was thirty-two miles away
From old Pearl Street this fatal day

Sacco's family hugged and kissed their dad
Said, "Take this family picture to the passport man"
He was in that office, forty odd miles away
From old Pearl Street this fatal day

One lady by the name of Eva Splaine
Saw the robbers jump in their car and drive away
For a second and a half she seen this speeding car
She swore Sacco was the bandit man

It was twenty, or thirty, or fifty more
Said Sacco was not in the robber's car
Judge Webster Thayer stuck by Eva Splaine
Said Sacco was the guilty man

Mrs. Sacco was heavy then with child
She walked to Sacco's cell and cried
The Morelli gang just down the corridor
Signed confessions they killed the payroll guards

"We seen Mrs. Sacco pregnant there
We heard her cry and tear her hair
We had to ease our guilty hearts
And admit we killed the payroll guards"

Judge Webster Thayer could not allow
The Morelli gang's confession to stop him now
Sacco and Vanzetti are union men
And that verdict, guilty, must come in

The bullet expert took the stand
Said the bullets from the bodies of the two dead men
Could not have been fired from Sacco's gun
Nor from Vanzetti's gun have come

It was sixty-three days this trial did last
Seven dark years come a-crippling past
Locked down in that mean old Charlestown jail
Then by an electric spark were killed

Old Boston City was a dark old town
That summer's night in August the switch went down
People they cried and marched and sung
Every tongue this world around