Muff Lawler, the Squealer [Laws E25]

DESCRIPTION: Muff Lawler, a member of the Molly Maguires, is accused (of murder). Rather than face the consequences, he offers to turn informant if he can be protected from the remaining Mollies. The deal is struck when the lawyers offer to send him to another county
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1938 (Korson-MinstrelsOfTheMinePatch)
KEYWORDS: mining reprieve punishment
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1876 - Conviction of Michael "Muff" Lawler on a charge of murder
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Laws E25, "Muff Lawler, the Squealer"
Korson-MinstrelsOfTheMinePatch, pp. 267-268, "Muff Lawler, the Squealer" (1 text, 1 tune)
Korson-PennsylvaniaSongsAndLegends, pp. 398-399, "Muff Lawler, the Squealer" (1 text, 1 tune)
Byington/Goldstein-TwoPennyBallads, pp. 5-6, "Muff Lawler, the Squealer" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT 710, MUFFLAWL
Roud #2254
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Sliding Scale" (about the pay system that was at the heart of the Long Strike and about Franklin Gowen against whom the strike was directed)
cf. "The Blacklegs" (another anto-Gowen song)
cf. "W. B. A." (a song of the events leading to the Long Strike of 1874-1875)
cf. "The Long Strike" (a song about the Long Strike itself)
cf. "Pat Mullaly" (likely about a worker who opposed the Long Strike)
cf. "Jimmy Kerrigan's Confession" (about another Molly Maguire "squealer")
cf. "Thomas Duffy" (about one of the executed Molly Maguires)
cf. "Michael J. Doyle" (about one of the executed Molly Maguires)
cf. The Doom of Campbell, Kelly and Doyle" (about three of the executed Molly Maguires)
cf. "Hugh McGeehan" (another executed Molly)
NOTES [4612 words]: This story arises from the conditions in the Pennsylvania coal fields in the 1870s. The mine owners treated the miners horribly, resulting in a violent response usually attributed to a shadowy group, the "Molly Maguires." So the owners set out to suppress the Mollies.
It should be kept in mind that "The Molly Maguires themselves left virtually no evidence of their existence, let alone their aims and motivations. Almost everything that is known about them was written by hostile contemporary observers" (Kenny, p. 5). In fact, this song is one of the few pieces from the other side.
To rid themselves of the Mollies, the mining companies hired the Pinkerton detective agency, and Pinkerton decided to employ James McParlan (who later took to spelling his name "McParland") to infiltrate the group. Muff Lawler was one of those he met.
"[Michael] Lawler was in his forties [when he met McParland] and... was 'above medium height, heavily but not clumsily built... with black hair and heavy side whiskers of the same color, the chin being shaven,' all below a bald crown.... [H]e ran a tavern, but he also still worked occasionally as a contractor in the mines" (Riffenburgh, p. 58).
According to Lukas, p. 181, Lawler was the "bodymaster" of the lodge of the Ancient Order of Hibernians who introduced "James McKenna" (the name used by McParland in his undercover work) to the Pennsylvania Hibernians -- and its local chapter with its clandestine terrorist side. Lukas says that Lawler also trained gamecocks (known as "muffs," hence his nickname) and that his nephew Ed was one of the Mollys' triggermen.
The Pennsylvania Molly Maguires were named for an earlier protest group in Ireland (Riffenburgh, p. 28, or see the notes to "The Molly Maguires"). In their defense, it should be noted that the mine bosses' treatment of their employees also verged on terrorism; the Mollies were just seeking decent conditions.
Weir/Hanlan, pp. 618-619: "Nineteen men were eventually hanged for involvement in what was supposedly a clandestine Irish and Irish American terrorist organization responsible for disorder and murders in coal mining regions of northeast Pennsylvania between 1870 and 1876. It has never been definitively proven that such an organization actually existed. Most of the testimony that condemned alleged Mollies came from Pinkerton agent James McParland, who supposedly infiltrated the Molly Maguires.
"Critics of the verdict claim that the organization was a fiction invented by coal and railroad barons as an excuse for crushing a legitimate trade-union movement that threatened to loosen the autocratic grip of mine owners, who kept workers toiling in company towns as impoverished chattel. They also point out that McParland was exposed as a pathological liar in a twentieth-century case involving the Western Federation of Miners..." (this is the Frank Steunenberg assassination case, for which see "Harry Orchard." Riffenburgh, pp. 1-16, effectively demonstrates McParland's untruthfulness. A typical one: McParland's tombstone gives a date of birth, yet McParland always denied that he knew when he was born -- and once claimed he had gone to sea in the year of his birth).
Rosenbaum, p. 233, "MOLLY MAGUIRES (1865-75), a secret organization among Irish-American coal miners in the anthracite fields of eastern Pennsylvania. During prolonged labor strife, the Molly Maguires allegedly resorted to intimidation, arson, and murder against strikebreakers and mine owners. A Pinkerton detective infiltrated and exposed the organization. On dubious evidence, 20 of its members were hanged and the organization destroyed."
One of the big reasons for all this conflict was that the Pennsylvania coal fields were special -- they supplied high-quality anthracite coal; few other coal fields had such a quality product (Riffenburgh, pp. 30-31). This meant that they offered the potential for high profits -- if they were managed appropriately. This was especially true of the southern fields, where the coal was hardest to mine because of the angle of the seams (Kenny, p. 47); in the northern fields, around Scranton, the coal was more accessible. Franklin Gowen was able to control enough of the coalfields to accomplish that management (Riffenburgh, pp. 22-27. Gowen had all the morals of a sea slug, but it's hard to deny that he was brilliant; in addition to assembling a successful coal monopoly, he was also the lawyer whose skills convicted the sundry Mollies; Bimba, p. 33. And he was put in charge of the Reading Railroad in 1869 at the age of 32; Kenny, p. 136. Which makes me wonder how he managed to avoid getting drafted into the American Civil War...). But he wasn't satisfied with monopoly control over a valued resource. He wanted to drive down his costs -- meaning that he wanted cheap labor. The miners fought back. Hard to blame them; it was a deadly job -- Bimba, p. 24, says that in 1871, 112 miners were killed and 339 injured in Schuylkill County. That was the worst year, but mining was never safe.
It's also possible that the miners suffered even more prejudice than most Irish in America; Kenny, p. 37, suggests that an unusually high proportion were from the Gaelic-speaking portions of Ireland. (In fact, one family involved with the Mollies, that of the "Widow O'Donnell," were cousins of Patrick O'Donnell, who half a decade after this would kill James Carey, the informant in Ireland's Phoenix Park Murders; Kenny, p. 207. For the Phoenix Park murders, the subject of close to a dozen songs, see the notes to "The Phoenix Park Tragedy.") The whole county was heavily immigrant (1870 population 116,428; 30,856 immigrants; 13,465 from Ireland; Kenny, p. 53).
The first death associated with the labor troubles came as early as 1862, when one Frank W. Langdon, who was criticizing a group of Irish miners, was beaten so badly that he died (Riffenburgh, pp. 32-33). But this happened relatively publicly, and spontaneously; could it really be blamed on a secret organization? "[I]t is difficult to see how it could have been attributed to the Molly Maguires other than retrospectively" (Kenny, p. 85). The only real evidence of terrorism in Pennsylvania in this period was that there were a lot of murders -- there were 14 in 1863, 14 in 1864, 12 in 1865, six in 1866. Many of these involved mine officials; in one case, a mine owner was killed in the sight of his family! (Riffenburgh, pp. 34-35). But certainly not all involved mine officials -- Kenny, p. 8, lists a total of only 16 Molly Maguire-type murders from 1862 to 1875, with just one each in 1862, 1863, 1865, 1866, and 1867, and none at all in 1864; it wasn't until 1874-1875 that things really got out of hand. (Kenny, p. 188, has a list classified by type. I'm a bit dubious of it, but it implies that organized attacks on mine officials mostly came late.) The Pennsylvania legislature in 1865 responded by letting the mining companies, and the railroads that worked with them, set up their own law enforcement organizations with significant, unregulated powers (Riffenburgh, p. 36).
The crimes rate did fall after that, but not because of the new law; the likely explanation is that the Workingman's Benevolent Association worked to improve the miners' living conditions while negotiating with the bosses (Riffenburgh, pp. 36-40; Kenny, p. 103).
But then Gowen started squeezing. And maneuvering. By the end of 1874, his Reading company owned more than 100,000 acres of land and more than 100 collieries (Riffenburgh, p. 43). He then used his market dominance to drive out the coal middlemen, and cut a deal with other coal owners to divide the market (Riffenburg, p. 44; Kenny, pp. 1501-151, lists the shares, with Reading getting the largest -- meaning that he could hope to eventually drive his competitors out of business and have a true monopoly). He had achieved a classic oligopoly, with nothing left to interfere with his dominance except the miners. He cut wages, and also started company stores and made it clear that the miners would shop there or be blacklisted (Bimba, p. 27; Kenny, p. 141, says that the Reading was the only rail line serving the area, so he was able to enforce his control by raising rates for businesses that resisted him).
These demands were so stringent that the miners again started to fight back. So Gowen talked to Allan Pinkerton about ways to destroy the miners' organizations (Riffenburgh, p. 45). And Pinkerton eventually decided to infiltrate an immigrant Irishman, James McParlan(d), into the Ancient Order of Hibernians to try to find out more about the Mollies. (There would be other Pinkertons later -- Riffenburgh, pp. 65-66, 71, etc.; p. 75 tells of them forming an official alliance and "flying squadron" with the company police, which gave the Pinkertons arresting power -- but McParland was the first and most important. The "squadron" was led by Robert J. Lindon, who would also be important in the aftermath. A Scotsman, P. M. Cummings, also infiltrated the Workingmen's Benevolent Organization -- Kenny, p. 156 -- but he found it entirely peaceful, which of course wasn't what Gowen wanted.)
Although McParland went in alone, he needed help and preparation. McParland worked for two weeks with Franklin Pinkerton to develop a new identity. McParland would become James McKenna. And even McKenna would be a sort of double identity. "McParlan's new character was not a nice man. He supposedly had come to the coal region to hide from the police after murdering a man in a grain elevator in Buffalo. But this was not to be 'disclosed' to just anyone -- his initial story was to be that he had worked in the silver mines of Colorado, where jobs were becoming scarce" (Riffenburg, p. 51). He would only reveal the "true" tale when he managed to reach the violent inner circle of the Mollies. He also was supposed to have a sideline dealing in counterfeit money.
"McKenna" headed for coal county on October 17, 1873 (Riffenburgh, p. 52), and wandered around the area for some days before making a temporary landing in Pottsville (Riffenburgh, p. 53). He gave a fine performance, drinking, singing, fighting -- but not finding a job (not that he actually wanted one -- he was there to investigate -- but he had to go through the motions!). So one of the friends he had made "suggested he go over the mountains to Shenandoah, where Michael Lawler, the bodymaster, would look after him" (Riffenburgh, p. 56).
Lawler got McKenna into the local HIbernians even though McKenna showed clear signs of having lied about his membership in Ireland (Riffenburgh, pp. 55, 57); he was initiated on April 14, 1874 at Lawler's tavern (Kenny, p. 155). Lawler also found him a job loading coal wagons rather than mining (Riffenburgh, p. 59), which was was relatively low on the pay scale and social hierarchy -- a job done mostly by the unskilled Irish (Riffenburgh, p. 62).
"McKenna" apparently won Lawler's trust by helping him with his fighting cocks. He ended up living with Lawler's family, even though it meant he no longer had his own bed and had to scramble very hard to write and deliver his reports (Riffenburgh, pp. 60-61). He also saw first-hand how hard the miners' lives were -- he called it the hardest work he ever had, and that was apart from claustrophobia and nausea from working in the dark, crowded conditions. Any normal person would surely have started to sympathize with the workers -- but McParland doesn't seem to have been normal.
"McKenna" went through two jobs, then stopped trying. He moved out of Lawler's fairly soon, but managed to find a better place where he didn't have to work so secretly -- and he stayed in Lawler's good graces (Riffenburgh, pp. 62-63). Indeed, on April 14, he was allowed to join the Hibernians -- and started to learn about the terrorist activities (Riffenburgh, p. 64).
Violence wasn't just directed at mine bosses. At least once, a man attempted to murder Lawler, and "McKenna" was instrumental in saving his life (Riffenburgh, p. 66). Something about this perhaps helps explain why Lawler lost his role as bodymaster the following summer, being replaced by Frank McAndrew. But McAndrew was almost illiterate, and so "McKenna" was appointed Secretary of the Shenandoah lodge despite his own limited grasp of spelling and an increasing debility that sounds like it was stress-related (Lukas, p. 183; Riffenburgh, p. 67).
Then came the so-called "Long Strike" that started in December 1874. John Siney, who had headed the Workingman's Benevolent Association, had moved on to a bigger union, and the WBO was in the relatively inexperienced hands of John F. Welsh, who was more willing to go on strike than Siney (Kenny, p. 169). Gowan meanwhile was putting more pressure on the miners' wages. The result was that the workers in the southern coalfields went on strike (Riffenburgh, p. 71). This quickly caused a spike in crime, but at first this was just the sort of brawling you see during any economic downturn, with more theft and violence because people were starving and scared (Riffenburgh, p. 72). But gradually the violence got more organized -- especially since the WBO was breaking down (Riffenburgh, p. 73).
In May 1875, the Long Strike collapsed, with most mine workers being allowed their jobs back under the harsh labor agreement that had caused the strike (Riffenburgh, p. 78). It is estimated that Gowan had forced a 26.5% pay cut on the typical worker (Riffenburgh, p. 80), and as wages continued to fall in the following years, the total decline from 1869 to 1877 was estimated at 54%. The strike had been so hard on workers that at least one superintendent had to supply food to his employees to enable them to work! (Kenny, p. 180).
During the strike, which aroused deep bitterness, violence was again threatened -- and McParland, who was acting head of his lodge while McAndrew was away, headed the mob, but also warned authorities that it was coming (so that police could be there), and managed to frighten the mob so that they did not attack at once (Riffenburgh, p. 79). Later, a murder was planned that he couldn't get out of, but he managed to delay it for a day -- and then got sick, seemingly genuinely but very conveniently (Riffenburgh, pp. 80-81). And on, and on -- the violence continued, with "McKenna" sometimes involved in the planning and sometimes not. The one thing that is clear is that the Pinkertons had not set up a good enough communication system for McParland to quickly report what he had learned.
Eventually the Mollies suspected a traitor. Muff Lawler was one of their first suspects (on October 9, about fifteen bullets were fired into his saloon, according to Riffenburgh, p. 106), but soon "McKenna" came under suspicion (Lukas, p. 185).
I won't go into all the details of the murders, which don't really affect our understanding of the song. Eventually the state started bringing people to trial, and earning convictions. As this was happening, "McKenna" gave up his alias and his infiltration work (both for safety and to help in the prosecution). Even as one of the trials was going on, about a dozen major figures in the mining movement were arrested and put in prison. Lawler was one (Riffenburgh, p. 125).
McParland's role was at best ambiguous. "The weight of the evidence in the Sanger, Uren, and Jones cases is that McParlan let these killings go ahead in order to accumulate more evidence" (Riffenburgh, p. 100, quoting Kevin Kenny without entirely agreeing with him). He played his role of agitator so well that there were mining officials wanted him to face vigilante justice (Riffenburgh, pp. 102-103). He courted the daughter of a labor leader as a way to stick around her father and learn what he could (Riffenburgh, p. 90). As a lodge Secretary, he would have been part of the planning of any terrorist acts.... He would then inform other Pinkertons (notably the "flying squadron"), who "tried to be present when a crime was committed so as to gather eyewitness accounts and physical evidence necessary for convictions.
"It was this procedure that later gave rise to suspicions that McKenna was an agent provocateur who encouraged the Mollies to commit crimes, then arranged for Linden [the Pinkerton liason] to witness them. This is difficult to prove. But it is worth noting that the Mollies' Shenandoah division didn't gain its reputation for homicide until McKenna became its secretary" (Lukas, p. 184).
More than that: When a man was on trial for murder, and McParland knew he was innocent, McParland did not come forward lest it break his cover. McParland said he expected the man, Daniel Dougherty, to be acquitted, and he was, but Dougherty had to undergo a dangerous surgery to remove a bullet to secure the acquittal (Bimba, pp. 84-85, who seems to think Dougherty was being deliberately framed; Riffenburgh, pp. 76-77). There is no reason to think McParland would have come forward had Dougherty's case gone against him.
"Serious questions surround the role of James McParlan in the assassinations of Sanger, Uren, and Jones. He clearly knew of the plot to kill Sanger at least one day in advance. McParlan named the men assigned to kill Sanger in a report dated August 31, 1875, the day before the assassinations took place [although the report was not received until September 2].... Why, then, did McParlan not notify Captain Linden or warn Sanger directly? His failure in the Jones case is even more troubling, as the plans for the assassination were known long in advance [though he got word out on that one in a timely way].... Did McParlan allow Sanger and Uren to be killed so that he could accumulate evidence against the Molly Maguires? Was the detective an agent provocateur?" (Kenny, pp. 199-200). I, at least, find McParland's actions deeply disturbing.
Even more than that: McParland openly admitted that he was not in public service, and that he would not risk his own life to protect another (which was not part of his job description, we should add): under questioning about why he didn't do more to help potential murder victims, he said he would not risk his own life to save another man; indeed, "I would not run the risk of losing my life for all the men in this Court House"; when prodded, "You would rather see this man Jones sacrificed," he responded, "Than sacrifice myself? Decidedly" (Riffenburgh, p. 102). He obviously isn't unique in that, but it's not what we'd expect of someone who supposedly was enforcing the law.
But then, the Pinkertons were not law enforcement. They were hired guns who did not consider the law to be binding on them -- Riffenburgh, p. 103, reminds us of their treatment of the James/Younger gang. Among other things, they had illegally half-hung Frank and Jesse James's stepfather; for details, see the notes to "Jesse James (III)."
Certainly, for an outsider just getting to know the Mollies, "McKenna" heard an amazing number of admissions of crimes (Riffenburgh, pp. 132-133),
McParland eventually testified, against his will (Pinkerton rules said their agents were supposed to keep out of courtrooms, and McParland had more reason to fear retribution than most!), in nine cases (Lukas, p. 186). It is noteworthy that, under Pennsylvania law at this time, the accused could not testify in their own defense, because they had an interest in the case (Riffenburgh, p. 142) -- but McParland, who had an interest in conviction, was allowed to testify.
"The trials of the Molly Maguires began in January 1876 and ended in August 1878. They bordered on a travesty of justice. The trials were conducted under conditions of enormously hostile publicity. The defendants were arrested by private policemen and convicted on the evidence of a detective who was accused of being an agent provocateur. The detective's evidence was supplemented by a series of informers who turned state's evidence. Irish Catholics were excluded from the juries as a matter of course [although, as Kenny points out on p. 218, Germans who couldn't even understand the testimony in English were accepted].... As one historian aptly put it: 'The Molly Maguire investigation and trials marked one of the most astounding surrenders of sovereignty in American history. A private corporation initiated the investigation... the state provided only the courtroom and the hangman" (Kenny, p. 213). On pp. 213-214, he says that "Thomas Duffy, James Roarity, and Jack Kehow, for example, surely ought not to have been convicted as charged" while admitting that "even those who were wrongly convicted may well have been involved in other, similar activities" -- in essence, the Mollies were real and were violent; it's just that no one truly knows who did what, and the trials did not really clarify the situation.
So, for instance, Kenny, p. 222, suggests that there was no real case against John Kehoe; it's just that he was a major figure in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and since the whole Pinkerton case rested on saying that the Hibernians and the Mollies were the same thing, they had to get Kehoe -- not because he was actually guilty but because the logic of their case required him to be guilty; if they couldn't nail him, then their other cases would be weakened at an abstract level, and they couldn't offer actual proof of much of anything. Kehoe had to die for the sake of the others. Which comes awfully close to judicial murder.
In the first trial, McParland testified for four days, and, pathological liar that he was, the defense could not shake him (Riffenburgh, pp. 125-127. Riffenburgh, pp. 154-156, is more generous than most of today's revisionist historians such as Bimba, and defends the general truth of McParland's statements -- but concludes "So McParlan appears to have been mostly honest, but not totally untainted.... [A] close acounting of his witness statements makes it clear that he held back the truth in various parts of his testimony and, ultimately did, in fact, commit perjury. Moreover, he did it more than once").
For the most part, his testimony was convincing. Even the national organization of the Ancient Order of Hibernians condemned the Pennsylvania branch (Bimba, p. 11). On June 21, 1877, ten alleged Mollies were hung, and others were executed on other dates. Lawler was not the witness that McParland was, so in some sense his guilt is less, but he'd certainly brought the traitor into the miners' midst.
After the first few convictions, most of which resulted in sentences of death, some of the accused started turning states' evidence. The first to do so was Patrick Butler, Bodymaster for Lost Creek (Riffenburgh, p. 145).
In August 1875, "Muff Lawler was tried as an accessory after the fact in the Sanger murder. McParlan testified that his old chum took several guns to hide for the killers when they came to his saloon after the murder, and added that, 'I know that he knew of crimes before they were committed, because before these men came back he said he wondered how the boys got along....' Lawler quickly admitted his role and turned state's evidence by corroborating information about other crimes, but the jury was unable to arrive at a unanimous verdict, after voting 10-2 for acquittal" (Riffenburgh, p. 146).
"On September 21, the Shenandoah saloonkeeper and AOH bodymaster, Michael 'Muff' Lawler, was arraigned as an accessory before the fact in the killings of Sanger and Uren. Lawler turned state's evidence and, as a result, the jury failed to reach a verdict.... But, in November, Lawler was tried for a second time in the Sanger-Uren case, convicted of second-degree murder [on November 13, 1876], and sent to prison" (Kelly, p. 224).
"McParlan returned briefly to Pottsville [after some months out of sight]... for the second prosecution of Muff Lawler. Having not succeeded with the earlier case, the prosecution used the same information but changed the charge from accessory to the murder of Sanger to that of Uren" (Riffenburgh, pp. 147-148). The defense pointed out defects in "McKenna's" actions, but the jury still found Lawler guilty.
That wasn't the end of Lawler's role in the Molly trials. In 1877, three men were accused of the murder of Alexander Rea in 1868. The main evidence was the testimony of a fellow by the name of "Kelly the Bum" -- a man who had already been convicted of highway robbery and grand larceny for other crimes. He was given a pardon for his testimony, plus money from citizens that let him leave the country (Kenny, p. 230) -- but you wonder why any Molly would have trusted him. Lawler corroborated some of Kelly's claims, and the three, Hester, McHugh, and Tully, joined the list of alleged Mollies sentenced to death (Kenny, pp. 228-229).
In the end, twenty men were hung for their part in the coalfield violence (so Riffenburgh, p. 150, contradicting the Weir/Hanlan figure given above; to be fair, some of the hangings were only tangentially related to the Mollies).
Lawler, unlike most of the others convicted, did not swing -- he was only an accessory, plus he had turned states' evidence. He not only survived; the Reading company gave him a job at the Indian Ridge shaft (Riffenburgh, p. 163). Little wonder the miners judged him harshly -- particularly since most of the local miners were Irish, and the Irish hated informers above all.
It is ironic to note that Gowen's Reading Company had spent so much to secure its monopoly that it went into bankruptcy in 1880 and forced Gowen out the next year (Kenny, p. 282). The company survived, and Gowen even returned in time, but he eventually killed himself in 1889 (Riffenburgh, p. 190).
Soon after Lawler's trial -- four years after James McParlan(d) had come to the area, the Pennsylvania coal cases were over. McParland left, never to return. Many of those he had accused had departed in an even more permanent way.
It might perhaps be noted that, in January 1979, Pennsylvania's Board of Pardons recommended, and Governor Joseph Wayne officially granted, a posthumous pardon to John Kehoe, the man McParland called the ringleader (Kenny, p. 284).
It's interesting that only a handful of Mollies seem to have songs about them, and that Lawler is one of them. What's more, it is the only one for which Korson has a tune, and seems to be the best-attested. His is the only song to have a Laws number, though Laws had a few other tentative references. (This is why this is the song with the most information on the Mollies.) It's not obvious why Lawler would be the best-known; the obvious candidate for the villain is Jimmy Kerrigan. Kenny, p. 194, refers to James "Powderkeg" Kerrigan as "the most infamous of the Molly Maguires to turn informer," and I think that description is right. Kerrigan is mentioned much more often in the histories than is Lawler. After his testimony, he fled to Virginia and took a different name, dying in 1898 (Kenny, p. 230 n. 59). There was a published piece, "James Kerrigan's Confession," but there is no hint at all that it went traditional. Maybe it was Lawler's connection with McParland which earned him special attention.
One thing that I find interesting is that, in Korson's text, Lawler's name is always used at the end of each verse, but it is not rhyme with anything. Other than in that position at the end of the verse, his name is used only once, and no other names are used at all. One wonders if this wasn't a "zippered" confession song, with some texts mentioning Kerrigan or someone else.
See the cross-references for other pieces about the Mollies, mostly from Korson and none with wide circulation -- neither I nor Laws is confident they were traditional. - RBW
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