SONGS OF THE CATTLETRAIL AND COW CAMP

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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TORONTO

SONGS OF THE CATTLE

TRAIL AND COW CAMP

COLLECTED BY

JOHN A. LOMAX, B.A., M.A.

Executive Secretary Ex-Students' Association,

the University of Texas.

For three years Sheldon Fellow from Harvard University

for the Collection of American Ballads; Ex-President

American Folk-Lore Society. Collector of

"Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier

Ballads"; joint author with Dr.

H. Y. Benedict of "The

Book of Texas."

WITH A FOREWORD BY

WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1919

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1919

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1919.

"THAT THESE DEAR FRIENDS I LEAVE BEHIND MAY KEEP KIND HEARTS' REMEMBRANCE OF THE LOVE WE HAD." Solon.

In affectionate gratitude to a group of men, my intimate friends during College days (brought under one roof by a "Fraternity"), whom I still love not less but more,

Will Prather, Hammett Hardy, Penn Hargrove and Harry Steger, of precious and joyous memory;

Norman Crozier, not yet quite emerged from Presbyterianism;

Eugene Barker, cynical, solid, unafraid;

"Cap'en" Duval, a gentleman of Virginia, sah;

Ed Miller, red-headed and royal-hearted;

Bates MacFarland, calm and competent without camouflage;

Jimmie Haven, who has put 'em over every good day since;

Charley Johnson, "the Swede" — the fattest, richest and dearest of the bunch;

Edgar Witt, whose loyal devotion and pertinacious energy built the "Frat" house;

Roy Bedichek, too big for any job he has yet tackled;

"Curley" Duncan, who possesses all the virtues of the old time cattleman and none of the vices of the new;

Rom Rhome, the quiet and canny counter of coin;

Gavin Hunt, student and lover of all things beautiful;

Dick Kimball, the soldier; every inch of him a handsome man;

Alex and Bruce and Dave and George and "Freshman" Mathis and Clarence, the six Freshmen we "took in"; while Ike MacFarland, Alfred Pierce Ward, and Guy and Charlie Witt were still in the process of assimilation,—

To this group of God's good fellows, I dedicate this little book.

p. vii

FOREWORD

In collecting, arranging, editing, and preserving the "Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp," my friend John Lomax has performed a real service to American literature and to America. No verse is closer to the soil than this; none more realistic in the best sense of that much-abused word; none more truly interprets and expresses a part of our national life. To understand and appreciate these lyrics one should hear Mr. Lomax talk about them and sing them; for they were made for the voice to pronounce and for the ears to hear, rather than for the lamplit silence of the library. They are as oral as the chants of Vachel Lindsay; and when one has the pleasure of listening to Mr. Lomax — who loves these verses and the men who first sang them — one reconstructs in imagination the appropriate figures and romantic setting.

For nothing is so romantic as life itself. None of our illusions about life is so romantic as the truth. Hence the purest realism appeals to the mature imagination more powerfully than any impossible prettiness can do. The more we know of individual and universal life, the more we are excited and stimulated.

And the collection of these poems is an additionp. viii to American Scholarship as well as to American Literature. It was a wise policy of the Faculty of Harvard University to grant Mr. Lomax a traveling fellowship, that he might have the necessary leisure to discover and to collect these verses; it is really "original research," as interesting and surely as valuable as much that passes under that name; for it helps every one of us to understand our own country.

Wm. Lyon Phelps. Yale University, July 27, 1919.

p. ix

INTRODUCTION

* * *

The "Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp" does not purport to be an anthology of Western verse. As its title indicates, the contents of the book are limited to attempts, more or less poetic, in translating scenes connected with the life of a cowboy. The volume is in reality a by-product of my earlier collection, "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads." In the former book I put together what seemed to me to be the best of the songs created and sung by the cowboys as they went about their work. In making the collection, the cowboys often sang or sent to me songs which I recognized as having already been in print; although the singer usually said that some other cowboy had sung the song to him and that he did not know where it had originated. For example, one night in New Mexico a cowboy sang to me, in typical cowboy music, Larry Chittenp. xden's entire "Cowboys' Christmas Ball"; since that time the poem has often come to me in manuscript form as an original cowboy song. The changes — usually, it must be confessed, resulting in bettering

the verse — which have occurred in oral transmission, are most interesting. Of one example, Charles Badger Clark's "High Chin Bob," I have printed, following Mr. Clark's poem, a cowboy version, which I submit to Mr. Clark and his admirers for their consideration.

In making selections for this volume from a large mass of material that came into my ballad hopper while hunting cowboy songs as a Traveling Fellow from Harvard University, I have included the best of the verse given me directly by the cowboys; other selections have come in through repeated recommendation of these men; others are vagrant verses from Western newspapers; and still others have been lifted from collections of Western verse written by such men as Charles Badger Clark, Jr., and Herbert H. Knibbs. To these two authors, as well as others who have permitted me to make use of their work, the grateful thanks of the collector are extended. As will be seen, almost one-half of the selections have no assignable authorship. I am equally grateful to these unknown authors.

All those who found "Cowboy Songs" diverting, it is believed, will make welcome "The Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp." Many of these have this claim to be called songs: they have been set top. xi music by the cowboys, who, in their isolation and loneliness, have found solace in narrative or descriptive verse devoted to cattle scenes. Herein, again, through these quondam songs we may come to appreciate something of the spirit of the big West — its largeness, its freedom, its wholehearted hospitality, its genuine friendship. Here again, too, we may see the cowboy at work and at play; hear the jingle of his big bell spurs, the swish of his rope, the creaking of his saddle gear, the thud of thousands of hoofs on the long, long trail winding from Texas to Montana; and know something of the life that attracted from the East some of its best young blood to a work that was necessary in the winning of the West. The trails are becoming dust covered or grass grown or lost underneath the farmers' furrow; but in the selections of this volume, many of

them poems by courtesy, men of today and those who are to follow, may sense, at least in some small measure, the service, the glamour, the romance of that knight-errant of the plains — the American cowboy.

J. A. L. The University of Texas, Austin, July 9, 1919.

PART I

COWBOY YARNS

p. 1

OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS

p. 2

THE SHALLOWS OF THE FORD

p. 5

THE DANCE AT SILVER VALLEY

p. 8

THE LEGEND OF BOASTFUL BILL

p. 11

THE TEXAS COWBOY AND THEMEXICAN GREASER

p. 14

BRONCHO VERSUS BICYCLE

p. 19

RIDERS OF THE STARS

p. 23

LASCA

p. 27

THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TEXASGIRL

p. 30

THE GLORY TRAIL

1 Pronounced by the natives "muggy-yones.

p. 33

HIGH CHIN BOB

p. 36

TO HEAR HIM TELL IT

p. 40

THE CLOWN'S BABY

p. 44

THE DRUNKEN DESPERADO

p. 46

MARTA OF MILRONE

p. 52

JACK DEMPSEY'S GRAVE

p. 54

THE CATTLE ROUND-UP

p. 56

p. 57

PART II

THE COWBOY OFF GUARD

p. 58

p. 59

A COWBOY'S WORRYING LOVE

p. 62

THE COWBOY AND THE MAID

p. 65

A COWBOY'S LOVE SONG

p. 67

A BORDER AFFAIR

p. 69

SNAGTOOTH SAL

p. 71

LOVE LYRICS OF A COWBOY

p. 74

THE BULL FIGHT

p. 76

THE COWBOY'S VALENTINE

p. 77

A COWBOY'S HOPELESS LOVE

p. 80

THE CHASE

p. 81

RIDING SONG

p. 82

OUR LITTLE COWGIRL

p. 84

I WANT MY TIME

p. 85

WHO'S THAT CALLING SO SWEET?

p. 86

SONG OF THE CATTLE TRAIL

p. 88

A COWBOY'S SON

p. 89

A COWBOY SONG

p. 90

A NEVADA COWPUNCHER TO HISBELOVED

p. 91

THE COWBOY TO HIS FRIEND IN NEED

p. 92

WHEN BOB GOT THROWED

p. 94

COWBOY VERSUS BRONCHO

p. 97

WHEN YOU'RE THROWED

p. 100

PARDNERS

p. 102

THE BRONC THAT WOULDN'T BUST

p. 104

THE OL' COW HAWSE

p. 106

THE BUNK-HOUSE ORCHESTRA

p. 109

THE COWBOY'S DANCE SONG

p. 112

THE COWBOYS' CHRISTMAS BALL

p. 117

A DANCE AT THE RANCH

p. 120

AT A COWBOY DANCE

p. 122

THE COWBOYS' BALL

p. 124

p. 125

PART III

COWBOY TYPES

p. 126

p. 127

THE COWBOY

p. 129

BAR-Z ON A SUNDAY NIGHT

p. 131

A COWBOY RACE

p. 132

THE HABIT

p. 134

A RANGER

p. 137

THE INSULT

p. 138

"THE ROAD TO RUIN"[2]

2 A famous saloon in West Texas carried this unusual sign.

p. 140

THE OUTLAW

p. 142

THE DESERT

p. 145

WHISKEY BILL,— A FRAGMENT

p. 146

DENVER JIM

p. 150

THE VIGILANTES

p. 152

THE BANDIT'S GRAVE

p. 154

THE OLD MACKENZIE TRAIL

p. 158

THE SHEEP-HERDER[3]

Only such cowboys as are in desperate need of employment ever become sheep-herders.

p. 162

A COWBOY AT THE CARNIVAL

p. 165

THE OLD COWMAN

p. 168

THE GILA MONSTER ROUTE

p. 172

THE CALL OF THE PLAINS

p. 174

WHERE THE GRIZZLY DWELLS[4]

Fox is a halfbreed Indian who sent me a lot of verse. Although he had never heard of Walt Whitman, these stanzas suggest that poet. The spelling and punctuation are mine.

p. 176

A COWBOY TOAST

p. 179

RIDIN' UP THE ROCKY TRAIL FROM TOWN

5 This fragment is not included in Mr. Clark's poem.

p. 182

THE DISAPPOINTED TENDERFOOT

p. 184

A COWBOY ALONE WITH HIS CONSCIENCE

p. 187

JUST A-RIDIN'!

p. 189

THE END OF THE TRAIL

THE END

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious spelling/typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Transcriber’s notes in text—mostly detailing corrections—are indicated by faint dotted underlining. Scroll the mouse over the word and the note will appear.

Inconsistent spelling and inline hyphenation occurs across poems and songs and is retained.

Introduction: original shows “Travelling” printed across a line break.

Page 9: “Adios” appears once, “Adiós” elsewhere.

Page 68: “good-bye” appears once, “goodbye” elsewhere.

Page 90: “sage-brush” appears once, “sagebrush” elsewhere.

Page 115: original illegible. “You” appears in the author's transcription of the song in John Avery Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, 338, (Macmillan 1918), http://www.archive.org/details/cowboysongsother00lomarich (accessed March 29, 2007).

Page 139: “hang-man” hyphenation retained.

Page 183: “roundup” appears once, “round-up” elsewhere.