A Song For A Sunday

“Daddy Come and Get Me”

Lyrics and Vocals: American singer-songwriter, actress, and businesswoman, the late
great Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean (née Parton) [1946 – 2026].

Listening to Dolly Parton’s “Daddy Come and Get Me” today, I find myself thinking of Ireland’s unmarried mothers and their children.
While, Dolly’s lyrics tell a slightly different story, its plea for someone to come, to listen, to bring a frightened woman home has a painful resonance here.
I think of women who needed kindness and support, and instead encountered shame and separation. I think of mothers whose children were taken for adoption, some sent across the sea.
I think of the years spent wondering, searching and grieving for someone still alive. Survivor testimony gathered by the Clann Project asks us to face that suffering with honesty.

“Daddy Come and Get Me”

In this mental institution, lookin’ out through these iron bars,
How could he put me in here, how could he go that far.
Yes I need help but not this kind, he didn’t love me from the start,
But it’s not my mind that’s broken, it’s my heart.
Oh Daddy come and get me and take me home with you.
I’m depending on you Daddy, there’s nothing I can do,
And you said that I could come to you if I ever was in need,
But Daddy I can’t come to you, you’ll have to come to me.
When he said he loved another, I was crazy with jealousy,
That’s ’cause I was crazy over him and I couldn’t stand to set him free,
And I couldn’t stand to lose him and I cried and cried for days,
And he said that I was crazy, but he just put me in here to get me out of his way.
Daddy come and get me,
Oh Daddy come and get me, and take me home with you.
I’m depending on you Daddy ’cause there’s nothing else I can do,
And you said that I could come to you if I ever was in need,
But Daddy I can’t come to you, you’ll have to come to me.
Oh Daddy, come and get me.

END.

I think also today, of the children in the protestant orphanage “The Bird’s Nest”, also the children in “St Patrick’s” on the Navan Road, “Madonna House” and “Cottage Home” who were included, indeed used, in vaccine trials.
Their participation is well documented; while profound questions about consent still remain.
Behind those institutional names were small children, entirely dependent on the adults entrusted with their care.
Their documented history deserves to be forever remembered.

There is something especially sorrowful about hearing this song on a Sunday, a day associated with faith, family and belonging, while remembering those who were denied the compassion that should have accompanied their plight..
Church and State had responsibilities towards them. So did the communities around them.

I am deeply sorry for the cruelty they endured, for the protection that failed them, and for every year in which their voices went unheard. No expression of regret can restore a childhood or return the years a mother and child lost together.
However remembrance must include listening, granting access to the truth and total accountability.

Today, I share the above song with tenderness towards those mothers, the children they lost, and the adults those children eventually became.

They deserved to be heard. They deserved protection. They deserved to know that they mattered.