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.

The big ranches of the West are now being cut up into small farms. The nester has come, and come to stay. Gone is the buffalo, the Indian warwhoop, the free grass of the open plain;--even the stinging lizard, the horned frog, the centipede, the prairie dog, the rattlesnake, are fast disappearing. Save in some of the secluded valleys of southern New Mexico, the 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

AND OTHER FRONTIER BALLADS

THE DYING COWBOY[1]

"O bury me not on the lone prairie," These words came low and mournfully From the pallid lips of a youth who lay On his dying bed at the close of day.

He had wailed in pain till o'er his brow Death's shadows fast were gathering now; He thought of his home and his loved ones nigh As the cowboys gathered to see him die.

"O bury me not on the lone prairie Where the wild cayotes will howl o'er me, In a narrow grave just six by three, O bury me not on the lone prairie.

"In fancy I listen to the well known words Of the free, wild winds and the song of the birds; I think of home and the cottage in the bower And the scenes I loved in my childhood's hour.

"It matters not, I've oft been told, Where the body lies when the heart grows cold; Yet grant, Oh grant this wish to me, O bury me not on the lone prairie.

"O then bury me not on the lone prairie, In a narrow grave six foot by three, Where the buffalo paws o'er a prairie sea, O bury me not on the lone prairie.

"I've always wished to be laid when I died In the little churchyard on the green hillside; By my father's grave, there let mine be, And bury me not on the lone prairie.

"Let my death slumber be where my mother's prayer And a sister's tear will mingle there, Where my friends can come and weep o'er me; O bury me not on the lone prairie.

"O bury me not on the lone prairie In a narrow grave just six by three, Where the buzzard waits and the wind blows free; Then bury me not on the lone prairie.

"There is another whose tears may be shed For one who lies on a prairie bed; It pained me then and it pains me now;-- She has curled these locks, she has kissed this brow.