Chapter 1

Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. Music transcribed by Linda Cantoni, Joyce Wilson, Espe (Nada Prodanovic), and the PG Finale Project Team.

[Transcriber's notes: -Page vii: The word following "view of what Owen" was unclear, and may not be the "Writes" which has been chosen. -(Mus. Not.) following a title means that the original book contains musical notation for that song.]

COWBOY SONGS

AND OTHER FRONTIER BALLADS

What keeps the herd from running, Stampeding far and wide? The cowboy's long, low whistle, And singing by their side.

COWBOY SONGS

AND OTHER FRONTIER BALLADS

COLLECTED BY

JOHN A. LOMAX, M.A.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SHELDON FELLOW FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF AMERICAN BALLADS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BARRETT WENDELL

_New York_ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1929

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1910, 1916, By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1910. Reprinted April, 1911; January, 1915.

New Edition with additions, March, 1916; April, 1917; December, 1918; July, 1919.

Reissued January, 1927. Reprinted February, 1929.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. BY BERWICK & SMITH CO.

_To_

MR. THEODORE ROOSEVELT

WHO WHILE PRESIDENT WAS NOT TOO BUSY TO TURN ASIDE--CHEERFULLY AND EFFECTIVELY--AND AID WORKERS IN THE FIELD OF AMERICAN BALLADRY, THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED

Cheyenne Aug 28th 1910

Dear Mr. Lomax,

You have done a work emphatically worth doing and one which should appeal to the people of all our country, but particularly to the people of the west and southwest. Your subject is not only exceedingly interesting to the student of literature, but also to the student of the general history of the west. There is something very curious in the reproduction here on this new continent of essentially the conditions of ballad-growth which obtained in mediaeval England; including, by the way, sympathy for the outlaw, Jesse James taking the place of Robin Hood. Under modern conditions however, the native ballad is speedily killed by competition with the music hall songs; the cowboys becoming ashamed to sing the crude homespun ballads in view of what Owen Writes calls the "ill-smelling saloon cleverness" of the far less interesting compositions of the music-hall singers. It is therefore a work of real importance to preserve permanently this unwritten ballad literature of the back country and the frontier. With all good wishes, I am very truly yours Theodore Roosevelt

CONTENTS PAGE

ARAPHOE, OR BUCKSKIN JOE 390

ARIZONA BOYS AND GIRLS, THE 211

BILL PETERS, THE STAGE DRIVER 100

BILLY THE KID 344

BILLY VENERO 299

BOB STANFORD 265

BONNIE BLACK BESS 194

BOOZER, THE 304

BOSTON BURGLAR, THE 147

BRIGHAM YOUNG, I 399

BRIGHAM YOUNG, II 401

BRONC PEELER'S SONG 377

BUCKING BRONCHO 367

BUENA VISTA BATTLEFIELD 34

BUFFALO HUNTERS 185

BUFFALO SKINNERS, THE 158

BULL WHACKER, THE 69

BY MARKENTURA'S FLOWERY MARGE 224

CALIFORNIA JOE 139

CALIFORNIA STAGE COMPANY 411

CALIFORNIA TRAIL 375

CAMP FIRE HAS GONE OUT, THE 322

CHARLIE RUTLAGE 267

CHOPO 371

COLE YOUNGER 106

CONVICT, THE 290

COW CAMP ON THE RANGE, A 358

COWBOY, THE 96

COWBOY AT CHURCH, THE 246

COWBOY AT WORK, THE 352

COWBOY'S CHRISTMAS BALL, THE 335

COWBOY'S DREAM, THE 18

COWBOY'S LAMENT, THE 74

COWBOY'S LIFE, THE 20

COWBOY'S MEDITATION, THE 297

COWGIRL, THE 251

COWMAN'S PRAYER, THE 24

CROOKED TRAIL TO HOLBROOK, THE 121

DAN TAYLOR 51

DAYS OF FORTY-NINE, THE 9

DEER HUNT, A 379

DESERTED ADOBE, THE 350

DISHEARTENED RANGER, THE 261

DOGIE SONG 303

DOWN SOUTH ON THE RIO GRANDE 331

DREARY BLACK HILLS, THE 177

DREARY, DREARY LIFE, THE 233

DRINKING SONG 305

DRUNKARD'S HELL, THE 395

DYING COWBOY, THE 3

DYING RANGER, THE 214

FAIR FANNIE MOORE 219

FOOLS OF FORTY-NINE, THE 404

FOREMAN MONROE 174

FRECKLES, A FRAGMENT 360

FULLER AND WARREN 126

FRAGMENT, A 306

FRAGMENT, A 309

FREIGHTING FROM WILCOX TO GLOBE 207

GAL I LEFT BEHIND ME, THE 342

GOL-DARNED WHEEL, THE 190

GREAT ROUND-UP, THE 282

GREER COUNTY 278

HABIT, THE 327

HAPPY MINER, THE 409

HARD TIMES 103

HARRY BALE 172

HELL IN TEXAS 222

HELL-BOUND TRAIN, THE 345

HERE'S TO THE RANGER 354

HER WHITE BOSOM BARE 271

HOME ON THE RANGE, A 39

HORSE WRANGLER, THE 136

I'M A GOOD OLD REBEL 94

JACK DONAHOO 64

JACK O' DIAMONDS 292

JERRY, GO ILE THAT CAR 112

JESSE JAMES 27

JIM FARROW 237

JOE BOWERS 15

JOHN GARNER'S TRAIL HERD 114

JOLLY COWBOY, THE 284

JUAN MURRAY 276

KANSAS LINE, THE 22

LACKEY BILL 83

LAST LONGHORN, THE 197

LIFE IN A HALF-BREED SHACK 386

LITTLE JOE, THE WRANGLER 167

LITTLE OLD SOD SHANTY, THE 187

LONE BUFFALO HUNTER, THE 119

LONE STAR TRAIL, THE 310

LOVE IN DISGUISE 77

MCCAFFIE'S CONFESSION 164

MAN NAMED HODS, A 307

MELANCHOLY COWBOY, THE 263

METIS SONG OF THE BUFFALO HUNTERS 72

MINER'S SONG, THE 25

MISSISSIPPI GIRLS 108

MORMON SONG 182

MORMON BISHOP'S LAMENT, THE 47

MUSTANG GRAY 79

MUSTER OUT THE RANGER 356

NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM 413

NIGHT-HERDING SONG 324

OLD CHISHOLM TRAIL, THE 58

OLD GRAY MULE, THE 403

OLD MAN UNDER THE HILL, THE 110

OLD PAINT 329

OLD SCOUT'S LAMENT, THE 117

OLD SCOUT'S LAMENT, THE 348

OLD TIME COWBOY 365

ONLY A COWBOY 124

PECOS QUEEN, THE 369

PINTO 340

POOR LONESOME COWBOY 32

PRISONER FOR LIFE, A 200

RAILROAD CORRAL, THE 318

RAMBLING BAY 397

RAMBLING COWBOY, THE 244

RANGE RIDERS, THE 269

RATTLESNAKE--A RANCH HAYING SONG 315

RIPPING TRIP, A 407

ROAD TO COOK'S PEAK 388

ROOT HOG OR DIE 254

ROSIN THE BOW 280

ROUNDED UP IN GLORY 393

SAM BASS 149

SHANTY BOY, THE 252

SILVER JACK 332

SIOUX INDIANS 56

SKEW-BALL BLACK, THE 243

SONG OF THE "METIS" TRAPPER, THE 320

STATE OF ARKANSAW, THE 226

SWEET BETSY FROM PIKE 258

TAIL PIECE 326

TEXAS COWBOY, THE 229

TOP HAND 373

TEXAS RANGERS 44

TRAIL TO MEXICO, THE 132

U.S.A. RECRUIT, THE 249

UTAH CARROLL 66

WARS OF GERMANY, THE 204

WAY DOWN IN MEXICO 314

WESTWARD HO 37

WHEN THE WORK IS DONE THIS FALL 53

WHOOPEE-TI-YI-YO, GIT ALONG LITTLE DOGIES 87

WHOSE OLD COW 362

WILD ROVERS 383

WINDY BILL 381

U-S-U RANGE 92

YOUNG CHARLOTTIE 239

YOUNG COMPANIONS 81

ZEBRA DUN, THE 154

INTRODUCTION

It is now four or five years since my attention was called to the collection of native American ballads from the Southwest, already begun by Professor Lomax. At that time, he seemed hardly to appreciate their full value and importance. To my colleague, Professor G.L. Kittredge, probably the most eminent authority on folk-song in America, this value and importance appeared as indubitable as it appeared to me. We heartily joined in encouraging the work, as a real contribution both to literature and to learning. The present volume is the first published result of these efforts.

The value and importance of the work seems to me double. One phase of it is perhaps too highly special ever to be popular. Whoever has begun the inexhaustibly fascinating study of popular song and literature--of the nameless poetry which vigorously lives through the centuries--must be perplexed by the necessarily conjectural opinions concerning its origin and development held by various and disputing scholars. When songs were made in times and terms which for centuries have been not living facts but facts of remote history or tradition, it is impossible to be sure quite how they begun, and by quite what means they sifted through the centuries into the forms at last securely theirs, in the final rigidity of print. In this collection of American ballads, almost if not quite uniquely, it is possible to trace the precise manner in which songs and cycles of song--obviously analogous to those surviving from older and antique times--have come into being. The facts which are still available concerning the ballads of our own Southwest are such as should go far to prove, or to disprove, many of the theories advanced concerning the laws of literature as evinced in the ballads of the old world.

Such learned matter as this, however, is not so surely within my province, who have made no technical study of literary origins, as is the other consideration which made me feel, from my first knowledge of these ballads, that they are beyond dispute valuable and important. In the ballads of the old world, it is not historical or philological considerations which most readers care for. It is the wonderful, robust vividness of their artless yet supremely true utterance; it is the natural vigor of their surgent, unsophisticated human rhythm. It is the sense, derived one can hardly explain how, that here is expression straight from the heart of humanity; that here is something like the sturdy root from which the finer, though not always more lovely, flowers of polite literature have sprung. At times when we yearn for polite grace, ballads may seem rude; at times when polite grace seems tedious, sophisticated, corrupt, or mendacious, their very rudeness refreshes us with a new sense of brimming life. To compare the songs collected by Professor Lomax with the immortalities of olden time is doubtless like comparing the literature of America with that of all Europe together. Neither he nor any of us would pretend these verses to be of supreme power and beauty. None the less, they seem to me, and to many who have had a glimpse of them, sufficiently powerful, and near enough beauty, to give us some such wholesome and enduring pleasure as comes from work of this kind proved and acknowledged to be masterly.

What I mean may best be implied, perhaps, by a brief statement of fact. Four or five years ago, Professor Lomax, at my request, read some of these ballads to one of my classes at Harvard, then engaged in studying the literary history of America. From that hour to the present, the men who heard these verses, during the cheerless progress of a course of study, have constantly spoken of them and written of them, as of something sure to linger happily in memory. As such I commend them to all who care for the native poetry of America.

BARRETT WENDELL. Nahant, Massachusetts, July 11, 1910.

COLLECTOR'S NOTE

Out in the wild, far-away places of the big and still unpeopled west,--in the canons along the Rocky Mountains, among the mining camps of Nevada and Montana, and on the remote cattle ranches of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona,--yet survives the Anglo-Saxon ballad spirit that was active in secluded districts in England and Scotland even after the coming of Tennyson and Browning. This spirit is manifested both in the preservation of the English ballad and in the creation of local songs. Illiterate people, and people cut off from newspapers and books, isolated and lonely,--thrown back on primal resources for entertainment and for the expression of emotion,--utter themselves through somewhat the same character of songs as did their forefathers of perhaps a thousand years ago. In some such way have been made and preserved the cowboy songs and other frontier ballads contained in this volume. The songs represent the operation of instinct and tradition. They are chiefly interesting to the present generation, however, because of the light they throw on the conditions of pioneer life, and more particularly because of the information they contain concerning that unique and romantic figure in modern civilization, the American cowboy.

The profession of cow-punching, not yet a lost art in a group of big western states, reached its greatest prominence during the first two decades succeeding the Civil War. In Texas, for example, immense tracts of open range, covered with luxuriant grass, encouraged the raising of cattle. One person in many instances owned thousands. To care for the cattle during the winter season, to round them up in the spring and mark and brand the yearlings, and later to drive from Texas to Fort Dodge, Kansas, those ready for market, required large forces of men. The drive from Texas to Kansas came to be known as "going up the trail," for the cattle really made permanent, deep-cut trails across the otherwise trackless hills and plains of the long way. It also became the custom to take large herds of young steers from Texas as far north as Montana, where grass at certain seasons grew more luxuriant than in the south. Texas was the best breeding ground, while the climate and grass of Montana developed young cattle for the market.

A trip up the trail made a distinct break in the monotonous life of the big ranches, often situated hundreds of miles from where the conventions of society were observed. The ranch community consisted usually of the boss, the straw-boss, the cowboys proper, the horse wrangler, and the cook--often a negro. These men lived on terms of practical equality. Except in the case of the boss, there was little difference in the amounts paid each for his services. Society, then, was here reduced to its lowest terms. The work of the men, their daily experiences, their thoughts, their interests, were all in common. Such a community had necessarily to turn to itself for entertainment. Songs sprang up naturally, some of them tender and familiar lays of childhood, others original compositions, all genuine, however crude and unpolished. Whatever the most gifted man could produce must bear the criticism of the entire camp, and agree with the ideas of a group of men. In this sense, therefore, any song that came from such a group would be the joint product of a number of them, telling perhaps the story of some stampede they had all fought to turn, some crime in which they had all shared equally, some comrade's tragic death which they had all witnessed. The song-making did not cease as the men went up the trail. Indeed the songs were here utilized for very practical ends. Not only were sharp, rhythmic yells--sometimes beaten into verse--employed to stir up lagging cattle, but also during the long watches the night-guards, as they rode round and round the herd, improvised cattle lullabies which quieted the animals and soothed them to sleep. Some of the best of the so-called "dogie songs" seem to have been created for the purpose of preventing cattle stampedes,--such songs coming straight from the heart of the cowboy, speaking familiarly to his herd in the stillness of the night.

The long drives up the trail occupied months, and called for sleepless vigilance and tireless activity both day and night. When at last a shipping point was reached, the cattle marketed or loaded on the cars, the cowboys were paid off. It is not surprising that the consequent relaxation led to reckless deeds. The music, the dancing, the click of the roulette ball in the saloons, invited; the lure of crimson lights was irresistible. Drunken orgies, reactions from months of toil, deprivation, and loneliness on the ranch and on the trail, brought to death many a temporarily crazed buckaroo. To match this dare-deviltry, a saloon man in one frontier town, as a sign for his business, with psychological ingenuity painted across the broad front of his building in big black letters this challenge to God, man, and the devil: _The Road to Ruin_. Down this road, with swift and eager footsteps, has trod many a pioneer viking of the West. Quick to resent an insult real or fancied, inflamed by unaccustomed drink, the ready pistol always at his side, the tricks of the professional gambler to provoke his sense of fair play, and finally his own wild recklessness to urge him on,--all these combined forces sometimes brought him into tragic conflict with another spirit equally heedless and daring. Not nearly so often, however, as one might suppose, did he die with his boots on. Many of the most wealthy and respected citizens now living in the border states served as cowboys before settling down to quiet domesticity.

A cow-camp in the seventies generally contained several types of men. It was not unusual to find a negro who, because of his ability to handle wild horses or because of his skill with a lasso, had been promoted from the chuck-wagon to a place in the ranks of the cowboys. Another familiar figure was the adventurous younger son of some British family, through whom perhaps became current the English ballads found in the West. Furthermore, so considerable was the number of men who had fled from the States because of grave imprudence or crime, it was bad form to inquire too closely about a person's real name or where he came from. Most cowboys, however, were bold young spirits who emigrated to the West for the same reason that their ancestors had come across the seas. They loved roving; they loved freedom; they were pioneers by instinct; an impulse set their faces from the East, put the tang for roaming in their veins, and sent them ever, ever westward.

That the cowboy was brave has come to be axiomatic. If his life of isolation made him taciturn, it at the same time created a spirit of hospitality, primitive and hearty as that found in the mead-halls of Beowulf. He faced the wind and the rain, the snow of winter, the fearful dust-storms of alkali desert wastes, with the same uncomplaining quiet. Not all his work was on the ranch and the trail. To the cowboy, more than to the goldseekers, more than to Uncle Sam's soldiers, is due the conquest of the West. Along his winding cattle trails the Forty-Niners found their way to California. The cowboy has fought back the Indians ever since ranching became a business and as long as Indians remained to be fought. He played his part in winning the great slice of territory that the United States took away from Mexico. He has always been on the skirmish line of civilization. Restless, fearless, chivalric, elemental, he lived hard, shot quick and true, and died with his face to his foe. Still much misunderstood, he is often slandered, nearly always caricatured, both by the press and by the stage. Perhaps these songs, coming direct from the cowboy's experience, giving vent to his careless and his tender emotions, will afford future generations a truer conception of what he really was than is now possessed by those who know him only through highly colored romances.