| Oh how we used to hate the sight
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| Of the evil rent collector coming in the night.
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| Got to tithe the 40 bushels, but it don’t seem right.
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| Up to the manor house to pay the Great Patroon.
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| We had taken a wilderness
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| And turned the Earth to bounty by the rake’s caress.
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| Never owning what we tilled below the crescent moon.
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| Up to the manor house to pay the Great Patroon.
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| The sheriff was about to sell their cows,
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| Or otherwise extort the rent.
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| So they met in barns and in out of the way places
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| To scheme all night on how to gain their ends.
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| What do you wear for civil war in 1844
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| In upstate New York?
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| What do you wear for civil war in 1844
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| In upstate New York?
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| These Indians wore Calico dresses,
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| belted at the waist,
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| Red flannel pantaloons,
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| oh! |
| Those masks were awful looking things,
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| With fringe around the neck.
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| Horns upon the forehead,
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| Coarse animal hair glued on for a beard.
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| At this pow-wow among the grotesque,
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| The chief wore a striped calico long lady’s dress.
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| Blow the tin dinner horn over the valley.
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| Call all the formerly normal men to revolt and rally.
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| The Feudal Land Laws should be abolished.
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| What are you waiting for? |
| it’s 1844!
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| The worm has begun to turn
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| I saw those Calicos scorn and spurn their accusers
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| with threatening talk and rough, tough, threatening gestures.
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| The feeling waxed stronger and stronger.
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| (Stronger and stronger)
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| They tried to talk like real Indians might-
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| «Me want cider,» and the like.
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| Many a head had worn this crown of feathers,
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| had tried to be the leader of the Anti-Rent Rioters.
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| I recognized it as having belonged to a left-handed neighbor,
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| a real indian man called Sander-Vatheverander.
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| Blow the tin dinner horn over the valley.
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| Call all the formerly normal men to revolt and rally.
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| The Feudal Land Laws should be abolished.
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| What are you waiting for? |
| it’s 1844?
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| The worm has begun to turn
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| Three, four, five, waaah!
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| Waaah! |