Tell me will that hang knot slip, no it will not Will that hang knot slip, no it will not. It will slip around your neck but it won't slip back again Hang knot hang knot that hang knot
Did you ever lose a brother on that hang knot Did you ever lose a brother on that hang knot My brother was a slave and he tried to escape They drug him to his grave on a hang knot
Did you ever lose your father on a hang knot Did you ever lose your father on a hang knot They hung him from a pole and they shot him full of holes And left him there to rot on that hang knot
Tell me who makes the laws for that hang knot Who makes the laws for that hang knot Who says who will go to the calaboose And get the hangman's noose for the hang knot
I don't know who makes the laws for that hang knot I don't know who makes the laws for that hang knot But the bones of many men are whistling in the wind Just because the tied their laws with hang knot.
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I had to transcribe this from listening to the record and can't guarantee its exact accuracy. I had never really attended to this song until the present thread caused me to recollect it, and on listening to it again I note that it has that (nearly unique) Guthrie touch of actually being able to say, "I was there! I saw! It happened to me!"
As in, for example,
My father's own father he waded that river, They took all the money he made in his life...
or
Waiting at the gate, we are waiting at the gate...
As Phil Ochs put it (in the greatest of his songs), "And he always stood his ground when the smaller men would run."
Carrol