"Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" (Roud 7992) is an American folk song that responds with humorous sarcasm to unhelpful moralizing about the circumstance of being a hobo.
Carl Sandburg collected the song for his anthology The American Songbag, and he wrote that it was "heard at the water tanks of railroads in Kansas in 1897 and from harvest hands who worked in the wheat fields of Pawnee County, was picked up later by the I. W. W.'s, who made verses of their own for it, and gave it a wide fame.
[6] A parody of the Presbyterian hymn "Revive Us Again" by William Paton Mackay, the song was printed by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1908, and adopted by its Spokane, Washington branch as their anthem later that year.
The song is requested of Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes by a co-prisoner in an early scene of the Elia Kazan movie A Face in the Crowd (1957).
The 1928 recording of the song was featured in Bob Dylan's Thanksgiving "leftovers"-themed episode of his Theme Time Radio Hour program.