Alabama '58 - The Dubliners

In Alabama 1958

The cost of human life is very low

A man that’s black is trampled down

Just like they were a thousand years ago

But these are more enlightened days

No room for all these savage ways

Leave and let them go

Now every man may walk his road in peace

For all are free!

Two thousand years ago a million men

Were gathered into royal Egypt’s land

Were bound together, forced to build

Pyramids of stone in desert sand

But these are more enlightened days

No room for all these savage ways

Leave and let them go

Now every man may walk his road in peace

For all are free!

Mary’s son walked through a land of woe

Dreaming of the world as it could be

But the good and lawful men of Rome

Bound him like a robber to a tree

But these are more enlightened days

No room for all these savage ways

Leave and let them go

Now every man may walk his road in peace

For all are free!

In Britain just a hundred years ago

The jails were full of good and hungry men

Diggers, Fenians, many more

Fought and died but rose to fight again

But these are more enlightened days

No room for all these savage ways

Leave and let them go

Now every man may walk his road in peace

For all are free!

Last year a negro stole a dollar bill

The judge he said «We mustn’t be severe

Instead of death we’ll give him life imprisonment

To show there’s justice here»

For these are more enlightened days

No room for all these savage ways

Leave and let them go

Now every man may walk his road in peace

For all are free!

And so throughout the ages you have seen

How progress marches ever on its way

No rack, no wheel, no Spanish boot

For Alabama’s prisoners today

For these are more enlightened days

No room for all these savage ways

Leave and let them go

Now every man may walk his road in peace

For all are free!

In these more enlightened days

No room for all these savage ways

Leave and let them go

Now every man should walk his road in peace

Let man be free!