The shame of those houses
With windows of steam
And the shame of those
Sheets that came out
So clean
The fear that lives with us
That powers our change
The stain of our secrets
The stain of those days
The girls were so quiet
Their lives maligned
They shut and put up
Could never ask why
She shouldn't have perished
She was too young
She froze to death beneath the
Winter sun
And history repeats
We know it well
We’ve fallen in love
With a new God's spell
A decade and a half is never enough
Sometimes these cases need a woman's touch
With windows of steam
And the shame of those
Sheets that came out
So clean
The fear that lives with us
That powers our change
The stain of our secrets
The stain of those days
The girls were so quiet
Their lives maligned
They shut and put up
Could never ask why
She shouldn't have perished
She was too young
She froze to death beneath the
Winter sun
And history repeats
We know it well
We’ve fallen in love
With a new God's spell
A decade and a half is never enough
Sometimes these cases need a woman's touch
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Gender Studies - EP
This song refers to the Magdalene Laundries. The Magdalene Laundries were Irish Free State institutions that housed so-called “fallen” women—anyone who didn’t fit neatly into the perceived category of a moral woman as defined by the church and state. The Laundries operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries, an estimated 30,000 of women were confined in these institutions in Ireland