Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp Part 1

Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp.

by Various.

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 p.r.o.nounce 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 addition 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 pa.s.ses under that name; for it helps every one of us to understand our own country.

WM. LYON PHELPS.

Yale University, July 27, 1919.

INTRODUCTION

"Look down, look down, that weary road, 'Tis the road that the sun goes down."

"'Twas way out West where the antelope roam, And the coyote howls 'round the cowboy's home, Where the mountains are covered with chaparral frail, And the valleys are checkered with the cattle trail, Where the miner digs for the golden veins, And the cowboy rides o'er the silent plains,--"

The "Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp" does not purport to be an anthology of Western verse. As its t.i.tle 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 Chittenden's entire "Cowboys' Christmas Ball"; since that time the poem has often come to me in ma.n.u.script 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.signable 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 to 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 gra.s.s 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

_The centipede runs across my head, The vinegaroon crawls in my bed, Tarantulas jump and scorpions play, The broncs are grazing far away, The rattlesnake gives his warning cry, And the coyotes sing their lullaby, While I sleep soundly beneath the sky._

OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS

OUT where the handclasp's a little stronger, Out where the smile dwells a little longer, That's where the West begins; Out where the sun is a little brighter, Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter, Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter, That's where the West begins.

Out where the skies are a trifle bluer, Out where friendship's a little truer, That's where the West begins; Out where a fresher breeze is blowing, Where there's laughter in every streamlet flowing, Where there's more of reaping and less of sowing, That's where the West begins.

Out where the world is in the making, Where fewer hearts in despair are aching, That's where the West begins; Where there's more of singing and less of sighing, Where there's more of giving and less of buying, And a man makes friends without half trying, That's where the West begins.

_Arthur Chapman._

THE SHALLOWS OF THE FORD

DID you ever wait for daylight when the stars along the river Floated thick and white as snowflakes in the water deep and strange, Till a whisper through the aspens made the current break and shiver As the frosty edge of morning seemed to melt and spread and change?

Once I waited, almost wishing that the dawn would never find me; Saw the sun roll up the ranges like the glory of the Lord; Was about to wake my pardner who was sleeping close behind me, When I saw the man we wanted spur his pony to the ford.

Saw the ripples of the shallows and the muddy streaks that followed, As the pony stumbled toward me in the narrows of the bend; Saw the face I used to welcome, wild and watchful, lined and hollowed; And G.o.d knows I wished to warn him, for I once had called him friend.

But an oath had come between us--I was paid by Law and Order; He was outlaw, rustler, killer--so the border whisper ran; Left his word in Caliente that he'd cross the Rio border-- Call me coward? But I hailed him--"Riding close to daylight, Dan!"

Just a hair and he'd have got me, but my voice, and not the warning, Caught his hand and held him steady; then he nodded, spoke my name, Reined his pony round and fanned it in the bright and silent morning, Back across the sunlit Rio up the trail on which he came.

He had pa.s.sed his word to cross it--I had pa.s.sed my word to get him-- We broke even and we knew it; 'twas a case of give and take For old times. I could have killed him from the brush; instead, I let him Ride his trail--I turned--my pardner flung his arm and stretched awake;

Saw me standing in the open; pulled his gun and came beside me; Asked a question with his shoulder as his left hand pointed toward Muddy streaks that thinned and vanished--not a word, but hard he eyed me As the water cleared and sparkled in the shallows of the ford.

_Henry Herbert Knibbs._

THE DANCE AT SILVER VALLEY

_DON'T you hear the big spurs jingle?_ _Don't you feel the red blood tingle?_ _Be it smile or be it frown,_ _Be it dance or be it fight,_ _Broncho Bill has come to town_ _To dance a dance tonight._

Chaps, sombrero, handkerchief, silver spurs at heel; "h.e.l.lo, Gil!" and "h.e.l.lo, Pete!" "How do you think you feel?"

"Drinks are mine. Come fall in, boys; crowd up on the right.

Here's happy days and honey joys. I'm going to dance tonight."

(On his hip in leathern tube, a case of dark blue steel.)

Bill, the broncho buster, from the ranch at Beaver Bend, Ninety steers and but one life in his hands to spend; Ready for a fight or spree; ready for a race; Going blind with bridle loose every inch of s.p.a.ce.