Cowboy Songs | Page 5

old-time round-up is no more; the trails to Kansas and to
Montana have become grass-grown or lost in fields of waving grain;
the maverick steer, the regal longhorn, has been supplanted by his
unpoetic but more beefy and profitable Polled Angus, Durham, and
Hereford cousins from across the seas. The changing and romantic
West of the early days lives mainly in story and in song. The last figure
to vanish is the cowboy, the animating spirit of the vanishing era. He
sits his horse easily as he rides through a wide valley, enclosed by
mountains, clad in the hazy purple of coming night,--with his face
turned steadily down the long, long road, "the road that the sun goes
down." Dauntless, reckless, without the unearthly purity of Sir Galahad
though as gentle to a pure woman as King Arthur, he is truly a knight
of the twentieth century. A vagrant puff of wind shakes a corner of the
crimson handkerchief knotted loosely at his throat; the thud of his
pony's feet mingling with the jingle of his spurs is borne back; and as
the careless, gracious, lovable figure disappears over the divide, the
breeze brings to the ears, faint and far yet cheery still, the refrain of a
cowboy song:
Whoopee ti yi, git along, little dogies; It's my misfortune and none of
your own. Whoopee ti yi, git along, little dogies; For you know
Wyoming will be your new home.
As for the songs of this collection, I have violated the ethics of
ballad-gatherers, in a few instances, by selecting and putting together
what seemed to be the best lines from different versions, all telling the
same story. Frankly, the volume is meant to be popular. The songs have
been arranged in some such haphazard way as they were
collected,--jotted down on a table in the rear of saloons, scrawled on an
envelope while squatting about a campfire, caught behind the scenes of
a broncho-busting outfit. Later, it is hoped that enough interest will be
aroused to justify printing all the variants of these songs, accompanied
by the music and such explanatory notes as may be useful; the negro

folk-songs, the songs of the lumber jacks, the songs of the
mountaineers, and the songs of the sea, already partially collected,
being included in the final publication. The songs of this collection,
never before in print, as a rule have been taken down from oral
recitation. In only a few instances have I been able to discover the
authorship of any song. They seem to have sprung up as quietly and
mysteriously as does the grass on the plains. All have been popular
with the range riders, several being current all the way from Texas to
Montana, and quite as long as the old Chisholm Trail stretching
between these states. Some of the songs the cowboy certainly
composed; all of them he sang. Obviously, a number of the most
characteristic cannot be printed for general circulation. To paraphrase
slightly what Sidney Lanier said of Walt Whitman's poetry, they are
raw collops slashed from the rump of Nature, and never mind the
gristle. Likewise some of the strong adjectives and nouns have been
softened,--Jonahed, as George Meredith would have said. There is,
however, a Homeric quality about the cowboy's profanity and vulgarity
that pleases rather than repulses. The broad sky under which he slept,
the limitless plains over which he rode, the big, open, free life he lived
near to Nature's breast, taught him simplicity, calm, directness. He
spoke out plainly the impulses of his heart. But as yet so-called polite
society is not quite willing to hear.
It is entirely impossible to acknowledge the assistance I have received
from many persons. To Professors Barrett Wendell and G.L. Kittredge,
of Harvard, I must gratefully acknowledge constant and generous
encouragement. Messrs. Jeff Hanna, of Meridian, Texas; John B. Jones,
a student of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas; H.
Knight, Sterling City, Texas; John Lang Sinclair, San Antonio; A.H.
Belo & Co., Dallas; Tom Hight, of Mangum, Oklahoma; R. Bedichek,
of Deming, N.M.; Benjamin Wyche, Librarian of the Carnegie Library,
San Antonio; Mrs. M.B. Wight, of Ft. Thomas, Arizona; Dr. L.W.
Payne, Jr., and Dr. Morgan Callaway, Jr., of the University of Texas;
and my brother, R.C. Lomax, Austin;--have rendered me especially
helpful service in furnishing material, for which I also render grateful
thanks.

Among the negroes, rivermen, miners, soldiers, seamen, lumbermen,
railroad men, and ranchmen of the United States and Canada there are
many indigenous folk-songs not included in this volume. Of some of
them I have traces, and I shall surely run them down. I beg the
co-operation of all who are interested in this vital, however humble,
expression of American literature.
J.A.L. Deming, New Mexico, August 8, 1910.

COWBOY SONGS