Union Maids

One of the songs we sing in the LadiesAux is Woody Guthrie’s Union Maid.

There once was a union maid, she never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called,
And when the Legion boys come ’round
She always stood her ground.

Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,
I’m sticking to the union, I’m sticking to the union.
Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,
I’m sticking to the union ’til the day I die.

Pete Seeger writes, “I’m proud to say I was present when “Union Maid” was written in June, 1940, in the plain little office of the Oklahoma City Communist Party. Bob Woods, local organizer, had asked Woody Guthrie and me to sing there the night before for a small group of striking oil workers. Early next morning, Woody got to the typewriter and hammered out the first two verses of ‘Union Maid’ set to a European tune that Robert Schumann arranged for piano (“The Merry Farmer”) back in the early 1800s. Of course, it’s the chorus that really makes it - its tune, “Red Wing,” was copyrighted early in the 1900s.[source]

These bluegrass songs are always an interesting hybrid of copyrights and wrongs and public domain bits of songs. Some of the girls in the Aux come from real old union families, back in industrial and mining towns threaded across North America, and they sing this song with a genetic memory fervour in their bones of what the Union has been, for bad or good. Others just dig the empowering fearless vibe. Others clowned at Union conferences in their embarassing teenage years, but that’s a whole other kettle of nonsense. All of us like to sing the word “union” together loud and with raucus harmony. We, like many other contemporary singers of this song, drop the last verse that was added at the urging of various prim parties, calling on the Union Maid to marry a good union man and make him a good wife. In our version “the union maid would win if ever the pigs came in, she’d hold her fist high unafraid to die, freedom is worth more then your skin.” It’s a tad more rousing…

The brilliant member of the Aux who wrote that last verse is also working on the LadiesAux zine, so when time comes for you all to see us at a show we’ll be able to hand out our lyrics and have you sing along!