The Slingers - Ned Kelly (Official Music Video)

The Slingers - Ned Kelly (2019)
Original Footage - The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)
Edited by Richard Cohen.
Words and Music by R. J. Mahon

Lyrics:
He rode out quick from Beveridge, ground firm with morning frost,
Please keep your rifles loaded, please keep your fingers crossed,
Silhouetted by the bushland, and with their pistols drawn,
Ned Kelly and disciples, lit Christlike by the dawn,

Like Charlemagne in armour, set on a jet-black colt,
Rest easy tonight, Ned Kelly, none of this is your fault.

The Governor sat in Melbourne, grown fat off kangaroo,
Sent gunning for the Kelly Gang, some good old boys in blue,
They crept across the creekbed, the silence sealed their fate,
Ned Kelly and companions, in ambush lay in wait.

And Lonegan, was struck down, as if by a lighting bolt,
Rest easy young policeman, none of this is your fault.

The telegraph wires were humming, up and down they rang,
Ned Kelly by court order, was here condemned to hang,
His mother cries, to southern skies, what for all the times I’ve prayed,
Such is the life God gives us, such is the world he’s made,

Have courage, Mrs Kelly, though your faith is pulled in pain,
Your tears are like your children, they have fallen all in vain.

Now the lanes are lined with junkies, we’ve paved the desert sands,
We leave unwelcome footprints, on someone else’s lands,
Now I’m sitting shit-faced, in the Bourke Street Mall Arcade,
Thinking of all the debt there is, that’ll never be repaid.

And still we are all outlaws, here, except of a different kind,
My silence will not shield me, I know the fault is mine.