"This song was composed by Aunt Molly Jackson and her youngest brother, Jim Garland, in 1932, recently after the murder of Harry Simms by the coal operators in Kentucky."
With comment by Glenn Morris about the ballad's source and the Pine Mountain Girls' Octet's recent tour and performances for Henry Ford and at the Roosevelt White House.
Note that despite the title, this is the typical American variant in which the protagonist is a man, not a maid. Elizabeth Lomax announces the title as "The Man Made Free from the Gallows," as it might have been known locally.