Cowboy Songs | Page 2

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