Dane Hinkle: sample music

*The Ashes (on Molly's Grave)

(Dane Hinkle with Tony Roark on bass guitar)

The Ashes (on Molly’s grave)
©Dane Hinkle August 2005 all rights reserved

On a hot summer day in Georgia
A year before the Civil War

A young slave girl named Molly
Was tending to her chores

In the distance she saw a wagon
Coming down her dusty road

A tenant farmer bringing eggs and meal
To her master’s home

He smiled and tipped his hat to her
As he passed by

His arms as strong as iron from work
And eyes as blue as sky

And then he stopped and asked for water
That she’d just drawn from the well

And she filled up his green mason jar
Before he bid farewell

In the months to come he and Molly
Became best friends

Until May 12 of that next year
Their meetings had to end

On the last night that he saw her
He was dressed in grey

His soldier picture he gave her
Before he went away

Battle after bloody battle
He would fight throughout the war

That poor white tenant farmer
Thought he knew what he was fighting for

Until three black men had been captured
To be hanged that next day

He was placed in charge of guarding them
Shoot to kill if they ran away

Oh but Molly weighed heavy on his mind
As he thought of their demise

So that night he turned his back to them
And fired his gun into the sky

In a battle he was wounded
And while in a prison camp he lay

Molly had a daughter
That she named Annie May

And her skin was brown as chestnuts
And her eyes as blue as sky

Molly knew that he might never know
She’d been told that he had died

But when the war the was finally over
To his home he returned

He went in search of Molly
But the plantation had been burned

Days led to weeks and weeks to years
And they lived their separate lives

Until 1916
When Molly died

And Annie May found the picture
In her maw’s bible it had been

And with it was a letter
Explaining how he was akin

She traveled to Atlanta
Where on his death bed he did lay

He looked into her eyes and smiled
And before he passed away

He told her about the lives he saved
The night he freed those slaves

And how they looked at him
Before they turned and ran away

She carried home his ashes
To be scattered on Molly’s grave

And buried there the letter
That for years Molly had saved

Now his body’s gone
But the love remained
In the heart of Annie May

And from his ashes
Grow the flowers on Molly’s grave

Yes his body’s gone
But the love remained
In the heart of Annie May

And from his ashes
Grow the flowers on Molly’s grave