Title:  Slavery’s Passed Away and Other Songs

Author:  Various

Release Date:  February 16, 2006 [EBook #17773]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of this project gutenberg EBOOK slavery’s passed away ***

Produced by Carlo Traverso, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Library of Congress.)

Slavery’s Passed Away and Other Songs

[Transcriber’s Note:  This file contains only the lyrics to the songs.  To view music images, hear the music in .midi format, or download Lilypond source code, see the HTML version of this e-text.]

Slavery’s Passed Away.

As sung in Edward Harrigan’s Drama,

“Pete.”

Words by EDWARD HARRIGAN.

Music by DAVE BRAHAM.

Copyright, 1887, by Wm. A. Pond & Co.

Oh child come to me and just sit down by my knee,
I’ll tell that same old story just once more;
Of dark, clouded years, oh, so full of bitter tears,
In those bondage days of long before the war. 
In rice-field and in cane, there the black man felt the pain,
The driver’s whip it cut him ev’ry day;
Our good Lord above, with his never dying love,
Made that cruel, cruel slavery pass’d away.

Oh child, in those times then I liv’d among the pines,
Yes, in an old log cabin I was born;
Then I heard the moan when the mothers lost their own,
In those bondage days, oh thank the Lord they’re gone. 
That Iron chain and band they grow rusty in this land,
No more the blood hound hold the slave at bay;
So we bend the knee to the Lord that made us free,
For that cruel, cruel slavery pass’d away.

Oh I don’t complain, it will never come again,
So all our little children, black and brown;
They ne’er can be sold for that yellow shining gold,
For sweet Freedom, child, she has put on her crown. 
She came here in the night, oh then might gave in to right,
Old Abra’m Lincoln brought about the stay;
So shout Hallelu—­there’s a lot of work to do,
For that cruel, cruel slavery pass’d away.

CHORUS.

    Oh shout Hallelujah, Freedom ever rules the land,
    Go bend your knee, black people for to pray;
    The shackle and the band has fell from the Bondsman’s hand,
    And that cruel, cruel slavery’s pass’d away.

OLE SHADY.

The Song of the contraband.

Oh! yah! yah! darkies laugh wid me,
For de white folks say Ole Shady’s free,
So don’t you see dat de jubilee
Is a coming, coming,
Hail mighty day.