We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.
/

about

Jeni wrote this song after reading Elizabeth Gaskell's Victorian novel, North and South, about the Manchester cotton mills. She wrote it in honor of her Aunt Linda Lowe her worked in a textile mill in Southwest Virginia.

lyrics

The Mill Hurries On
by Jeni Hankins © 2012

Oh, the cotton flew around us like an alien snow.
Having no way to melt, in our lungs it did go
and there made its home, like an unwelcome guest,
‘til it grew and it grew so we could not take breath.

There are trees in the country that give fruit for free –
not belonging to you or belonging to me.
No free thing can grown in a cotton mill town,
so to work we must go. Child, let us go down.

The machines, they did roar. They made my head ache,
but I could not take rest nor make a mistake
for the wages I earned, though meager alone,
when put with my family’s, preserved our dear home.

There are trees in the country that give fruit for free –
not belonging to you or belonging to me.
No free thing can grown in a cotton mill town,
so to work we must go. Child, let us go down.

Way down in my dreams, lived a devil well dressed.
He counted his money with his foot on my chest.
I knew that my fever told a story well known.
I am no longer and the mill hurries on.

There are trees in the country that give fruit for free –
not belonging to you or belonging to me.
No free thing can grown in a cotton mill town,
so to work we must go. Child, let us go down.

credits

from Live in LA with the Big Picnic Band, track released May 1, 2015
by Jeni Hankins © 2012

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Jeni Hankins London, UK

Jeni Hankins grew up in the coalfields of Appalachian in Southwest Virginia among a family of miners, moonshiners, and journalists. Her writing pulls the grit, gumption, and keen sense of observation out of that heritage like drawing water from her grandmother’s well.

In every song, Jeni’s “true sense of place shines through – old as the hills, but brand new at the same time.”
... more

contact / help

Contact Jeni Hankins

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this track or account

Jeni Hankins recommends:

If you like Jeni Hankins, you may also like: