What Goes Around, Comes Around
Words and Music Pat Drummond
Dateline: Beechworth Prison Museum, Beechworth, Victoria
For William Wallace, Ned Kelly and David Hicks

 

When William Wallace on that scaffold
gave his anguished "Freedom!" shout
Did the tyrant in his tower know what that scream was about?
Did he hear death coming for him? Did it even cross his thoughts
That he'd die one day, in agony, in the splendor of his court?
What goes around, comes around.
How easily that king became a knave!
What goes around, comes around.
William Wallace died a hero while we spit on Edwards grave.

Chorus : One road in and one road out; without a shadow of a doubt
you can brutalize your brother but your own time is running out.
Woe to you The Chosen Few, history see the things you do
in your efforts to make privilege survive.
There's no escape, there's just one gate.
The Archangel is waiting. You ain't getting out of here alive.

Mr. Justice Redmond Barry
heard Ned Kelly speak his piece
He thought, "They call you 'hero' now, son;
soon they'll call you 'the deceased'."
In his arrogant regalia; from his high place on the bench,
he did not know what it was like to choke
And feel the hangman's wrench.
What goes around, comes around.
Mr. Justice Redmond Barry choked before their very eyes
What goes around, comes around.
and it happened in the same month that he took Ned Kelly's life

Chorus

Now you tyrants of the modern world
Who rule by death and fear
In Burma and Guantanamo Bay
Tibet and Tiennamen Square
Like all the fools before you
You're doomed to disappear
And may it still be Wallace's shout (Freedom!)
that's ringing in your ears

Chorus

 

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