I'd like to do a song this time.
Very, very few songs that I do that are not
Irish.
But this one is one of the exceptions,
one of the few exceptions.
It's a song written by the late, great
Woody
Guthrie about man's
inhumanity to man.
About the fruit pickers coming from
Mexico to pick the fruit in
California.
It's a beautiful song.
It's called deportees
The crops are all in the peaches
they're gathered
Oranges packed in their
creosote bins
They're flying them back to the
Mexican border
It will take all their money
to get back again
So farewell to my friends, goodbye
Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, you're the same
Maria
You won't have a name when
you fly the big aeroplane
All they will call you will be deportees
The sky plane could fire over
Los
Gabes
Canyon
The fireball lit up, it shook the hills round
Oh, who are most friends who
are scattered like dry leaves
The radio said they were just deportees
So farewell to my friends, goodbye
Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, you're the same
Maria
You won't have a name when
you fly the big aeroplane
All they will call you will be deportees
Is this the best way to till
our good orchards?
Is this the best way we can
grow our good fruit?
To lie on the ground and to
rot beneath the topsoil
And never know no name
except deportee
So farewell to my friends, goodbye
Rosalito
Adios, mis amigos, you're the same
Maria
You won't have a name when
you fly the big airplane
All they will call you will
be deportees
Some of us were illegal and
some were not wanted
Our work contracts finished,
we've got to move on
It's six hundred miles to the
Mexican border
They chase us like rustlers, like outlaws,
like thieves
So farewell to my friends, goodbye
Rosalitas
Adios, mis amigos
You're the same,
You won't have a name
When you fly the big airplane
All they will call you
Will be deportee
Thank you very much.