Shiner Gazette (Shiner, Tex.), Vol. 34, No. 40, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 11, 1927 Page: 2 of 16
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By YALYERA MOORE.
T^OMANCE has ever woven itself
TIYi around that modern Knight Er-
rant, ,the Cowboy of the Western
Plains. No more gallant rider
drew rein or wore the cross in
a crusade. Quite fittingly he had
his minstrel, who sang of his deeds
and with rhythm lightened his task.
Hence the cowboy ballad. His moods
and his labor find expression in these
naive songs. Many of the verses were
woven into ballad as events moved the
poet to expression. Practically all of the
poets and composers are unknown to
fame, but the galloping lilt of. some of
the trail songs seems to echo the beat
of pony hoofs, and the measure of most
of them was lifted from some camp
meeting spiritual or popular love sonnet
of the day in which they were sung—
for sung, rather than written, they were.
This newspaper is glad to assist in pre-
serving some of these ballads from ob-
livion.
Cattle Lullabies.
Coming across the prairies in the good
old days any powboy might be heard
humming this favorite refrain:
“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.”
Ballads of the cowboy were not sharp,
harsh, or unrhythmic, put into verse for
J the purpose of prodding the lagging
herds, but were, instead, cattle lullabies
improvised by night guards as they rode
the rounds of the sleeping herds. These
were called “dogie songs,” and, coming
straight from the heart of the cowboy,
who loved his animals, the lullaby often
kept the cattle quiet when there was
danger of a stampede.
One of the better known of the “guard
croons” is:
“Then an e-e-e-lee-a-a-a,
And an a-a-ah-lee-oo—
My little bedded dogies,
I am a-a-a-watchin’ you.
Drop you down and don’t you go stampedin’,
Coyote’s jes’ a-foolin’ over there;
Hain’t a bit o’ danger in his yippin’ and his
yappin’—
Show the prairie bluffer you don’t care.
Then an e-e-e-lee-a-a-a,
And an a-a-ah-lee-oo—
My little bedded dogies,
I am a-a-a-watchin’ you.”
A night herding song, which was writ-
ten by Harry Stephens, and carries with
* it a crooning swing is a favorite in many
sections of the cattle country:
“Oh, slow up, dogies; quit your roving round,
You have wandered and tramped all over the
ground.
Oh, graze along, dogies, and feed along slow,
And don’t be forever on the go.
Oh, move slow, dogies; move slow—
Hi-oo, hi-oo-oo!”
Some critic has asked, and then an-
swered his own question, of how a herd
of cattle can be driven hundreds of
miles along the old trails without caus-
ing trouble to the drivers. The answer,
in a refrain of four lines, became a song
in itself:
“What keeps the herd from running,
Stampeding far and wide ?
The cowboy’s long, low whistle,
And singing by their side.”
No song in America, according to
many critics, holds more originality and
unaffected simplicity, than the cow-
boy ballad. , . .
• Jf\. -
I’d met him, and surely would labor
To jes’ git acquainted and more.
Out West you kin gab free and easy,
t And strangers their views may exchange.
"Why, dog-gone the luck, I always was stuck
On the whole-hearted ways of the range.”
Democracy Unreserved.
This business of being a cowpuncher
was not an easy life. There was not
much remuneration in it for the fellow
who spent his days herding cattle.
The profits belonged to the owner, but
on the range owner and herder
alike ate, slept and lived by the side
The ballad is
a product of
the big, un-
schooled West
and contains
the spiritual
b a c k g round
and pioneer
spirit of the
early Texans.
Its virile and
perse vering
a t m o s phere
reflects more
of the West
than any oth-
er song in
America.
- .... ^ ” *
' •* — • • -
. j--
fir.
Love of the
Range.
One of the
most poig-
nant of these
songs, and
one that is
still sung
with much of
its origi-
nal zest is
“Home on
the Range,” which follows:
mm
stH
‘Home-
“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
“Home—home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard the discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.”
And the range is home to the cowboy!
There can never be another! One of the
lyrics which shows the dislike of the
cowboy for the city and his homesick-
ness for the great open spaces, is the
ballad entitled “A Cowboy in the City”:
“—But still I am homesick and weary;
The city somehow hits me wrong.
Its music seems holler and dreary,
For I’d rather hear that old song—
‘Bury me not on the lone prairie—’
’Twould sure give my feelin’s a change,
For, dog-gone the luck, I always was stuck
On the songs that we sing on the range.
Back home I would talk to my neighbor,
No matter if never before
home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play!”
of each other during the season of
roundups. When winter was over
and spring came around, the cattle
on the ranch were brought back to head-
quarters and branded, and the yearlings
were driven to market at Dodge City,
Kansas.
“Going up trail” was an experience
to be looked forward to during the long
winter months. And with the great
herds went the boss, the straw-boss, the
cowboy proper, the wrangler and the
cook. At night, when the cattle were
settled in small groups where the grass
was plentiful, all the boys would gather
about the camp fire, tell their prize
stories, and sing. There w’as. nothing
else for them to do and .most of their
evenings were spent in this manner.
One of the best known of the “old trail
songs” came with the opening of the
Chisholm Trail, named for John Chis-
holm, a trail driver:
‘Come along, boys, and listen to my tale,
I’ll tell you of my troubles on the old Chis-
holm trail.”
The song goes on at length, telling of
the trials of a tenderfoot in the cow
country, concluding with these stanzas:
“With my knees in the saddle and my seat in
the sky,
I’ll quit punching cows in the sweet by
and by.
Come tiyi youpy, youpy, youpy, youpy ya,
Come ti yi youpy, youpy, youpy, youpy ya.”
Chisholm, who was living for a time
in the Indian Territory, contracted to
supply beef for Fort Scott, Kansas. The
trail across the States was poor and as
the years
passed and
greater herds
were driven
over the trail
each year, the
passage - way
to market
was made
easier. In the
years 1866
and 1867 the
old Chisholm
trail saved
Texas from
disaster for
the ranges
were over-
stocked and
there was no
market. Had
the trail, the
trodden
stretch of
prairie seven
hundred
miles long
which ran
from San An-
tonio, Texas,
to Dodge
City, Kansas,
not been opened up there would have
been no impetus for commercial devel-
opment.
Solemn Thoughts.
The reckless, fearless and chivalrous
youth who lived hard, fought hard, and
died hard, had his moments of weakness,
his. moments of sorrow and his moments
of joy. The more serious moments,
when some member of the gang “had
gone West,” were fittingly expressed in
a song that went to the depths of every
cowboy’s heart, and now finds reverber-
ation in the hearts of younger genera-
tions :
“O bury me not on the lone prairie,
In a narrow grave, just six-by-three—
Where the wild coyotes will howl over me,
0 bury me not on the lone prairie.”
And the old-timer can never forget
the sentiment expressed by his pal when
they stood side by side and buried one
of their “gang.” To them the song was
a solemn promise that would never be
broken. The sympathy of the singers
■ I§8
was expressed in the last two verses of
“The Cowbpy’s Grave”:
“When my soul hunts range and rest
Beyond the last divide,
Just plant me on some strip of West,
That’s sunny, lone, and wide.
Let the cattle rub my headstone round,
And coyotes wail their kin.
Let hosses come and paw the mound—
BUT—don’t you fence me in!”
This was the heart-song of the care-
free, lovable cowboy, who felt that the
broad, boundless prairie was his home,
and that with the coming of barbed wire
fences his cowboy days would end.
Hatred of Cowardice.
In the early days, when travel across
country was made on horseback, visitors
who came to Texas for adventure or on
excursions of business found a song that
was popular in every cow camp and
around every camp fire. This was back
in the early ’70’s and the song was en-
titled “Jesse James”:
“Jesse James was a lad that killed many a
man—
He robbed the Danville train.
But that dirty little coward that shot Mr.
Howard,
Has laid poor Jesse in his grave.
Poor Jesse has a wife to mourn for his life,
Three children, they were1 brave.
But that dirty little coward that shot Mr.
Howard,
Has laid poor Jesse in his grave.”
Oscar J. Fox, famous co\vboy ballad-
ist, who has done much toward the per-
petuation of the songs of the range, says
the Texas cowboy played a greater part
in the founding of his State than any
one group of pioneers, and that it was
the cowboy who blazed the trails across
the plains over which civilization came
later. Mr. Fox, who finds that the bal-
lads are overflowing with the virile at-
mosphere which is characteristic of the
Texas plainsman, has attempted to
write into the songs many of the lost
melodies.
Despite the fact that the origin of the
ballads is unknown, they exist, and since
they exist, and are still being sung by
those who have seen the passing of the
cowboy, they are to be perpetuated be-
cause they bespeak the heart of a fine
race of men, whose songs deserve to be
preserved along with the older sagas of
the Nordic race, as the expression of
real manhood.
The carefree, unforgettable cowboy,
with his knotted kerchief, his woolly
chaps, and the hoofbeats of his fiery
mustang, may disappear from the cattle
trails of Texas, Oklahoma and the other
Western States, but lingering long after
him and his day will be the song:
“Home—home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard the discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.”
i!
HOOVER FORESEES
AIR SERVICE
By L. C. SPEERS.
(New York Times.)
HE United States is far in the lead
of European countries in commer-
cial aviation, with the exception
of passenger traffic. No other na-
tion approaches the volume of mail and
express carried by American airplanes,
and even with a smaller passenger-carry-
ing business the commercial aviation
mileage of the United States is expected
by the end of the year to be almost equal
to the total commercial flying mileage
of all Europe. These statements were
made in an interview recently with
Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Com-
merce, in whose department is a division
devoted to the encouragement of com-
mercial aviation.
“We are going to have a real air serv-
ice in the United States,” Mr. Hoover
said.
Nowhere else in the world, the Secre-
tary of Commerce believes, is commer-
cial aviation developing as rapidly as in
this country. There are in the United
States eighty manufacturing establish-
ments turning out airplanes, while the
number of airplane distributers is near-
ly 100. Hundreds of other concerns are
making airplane parts and accessories.
Sixteen companies are carrying express
and the United States mails. In addi-
tion to these there are more than 260
enterprises listed as “not on schedule
route” which cater to the “aerial taxi”
and express business.
“No one can at this time foretell the
vast possibilities of aerial transporta-
tion,” Mr. Hoover said. “Already it is
here for mails and express and to a lim-
ited extent for the carrying of passen-
gers. Yet, commercially as well as from
a military standpoint, it is still in the
formative period.”
No Subsidy Needed Here.
Mr. Hoover pointed out that whereas
European air lines are heavily subsi-
dized, no such Government aid has been
provided in the United States. “And,”
he added, “there will be no subsidy in
this country. The business is paying its
own way and is growing every day. As
a matter of fact, purely on the basis of
comparison of transportation condi-
tions in. the United States with those of
Europe, I have high hopes of a vepy
much larger revenue not only from ex-
press but also from passenger traffic
than is enjoyed by the air lines of Eu-
rope.
“Our geographical, political and eco-
nomic setting is far different from
that of Europe. Take our distances,
for instance. They are much great-
er, and.the values in speed to be ob-
tained are for that reason much
larger. Again, and nothing is more
important than this—the United
States is a single political unit,
whereas there is in Europe hardly
an air route that is not facing the
handicap of international bounda-
ries. Always the flow of trade is far
more localized within the small areas
of individual nations.
“Here in America we have an area
of about 3,000 miles from ocean to
ocean and 2,000 miles from Canada
to Mexico, a vast territory undis-
turbed by national border lines. At
the same time our commerce is
much more extensive and wide-
spread than is the case in Europe;
the people of the United States have
a very much larger activity in the
transportation of goods, express,
mail and of passengers than of any
country in Europe.
“The best figures I have show
that the United States last year car-
ried twenty-three tons of freight
per capita as against nine tons in
Britain and six tons in France, while
over the. same period, in all forms of
transportation, our per capita record
was ninety passengers as compared with
fortv in Britain and' eighteen in France.
“In the matter of mails, the num-
ber of pieces carried in this country was
figured on a per capita basis at 157, as
compared with 125 for Britain, 105 for
France, 47 for Germany and 43 for
Italy. One more thought along this
line—the movement between the 3,000-
mile extremes of the Atlantic and Pa-
cific States is far greater than that be-
r,»
tween any two nations in Europe.
“Now back to commercial aviation in
America and its possibilities. Our gov-
ernment has a dual objective in the field
of commercial aviation, and that is na-
tional defense through the provision of
manufacturing capacity, trained person-
nel, large reserve air fleets and the de-
velopment of a new and a speedier form
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of transportation. Just now our air de-
fenses are largely dependent upon mili-
tary orders to our manufacturers and
upon militarily trained personnel,
which, of course, imposes a very large
cost upon the government.
Better for National Defense.
“It is, of course, obvious that if com-
mercial aviation can be established on a
large scale the saving in direct govern-
mental expenditures would be enormous,
and at the same time we would be placed
in a much more efficient position in the
matter of national defense owing to the
greatly enlarged manufacturing capac-
ity, the increased personnel and the re-
serve in airplanes and equipment that
would be available for immediate serv-
ice in the event of a national emergen-
cy. The direct commercial aim is, of
course, thp transportation of mail and
express, and to a certain extent pas-
sengers, in a much more expeditious
way.”
“Just what is necessary to get
this movement going satisfactorily
in the United States?” Mr. Hoover
was asked.
Mr. Hoover replied by producing
some startling statistics to show
how vastly greater has been the
progress of aviation in this country
than the average man in the street
has thought it to be. For instance,
it was pointed out that commercial
aviation is developing so rapidly in
the United States that before the
end of this year the American na-
tional flying mileage may be expect-
ed to reach a total within 25,000
miles of the total monthly flying
mileage of all Europe. Also the fact
was cited that within a short time
the Federal government will have
provided 9,300 miles of airways with
emergency fields, 7,000 miles of
them lighted.
With Chicago as the center, or the
hub, these airways will connect
twenty cities with a population of
approximately 25,000,000 people.
Other cities included in this aerial
chain are: New York, Cleve-
land, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Salt Lake City, Omaha, Detroit,
Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Fort Worth,
Dallas, Milwaukee, Seattle, Portland
(Ore.), Kansas City and St. Louis.
“The actual thing immediately nec-
essary in the development of commer-
cial aviation,” Mr. Hoover said, “is air-
ports or terminals, which should be pro-
vided by the principal municipalities of
the country in the same way coast cities
provide docking facilities for home and
foreign ocean trade. Such suitably
equipped landing fields as are necessary
will make a city or a town an airport
in the same way that docks and shipping
facilities make them seaports.
“Air routes, whether for mail, pas-
senger or express traffic, can scarce-
ly be expected unless there is a chain of
airports, where supplies, shelter, con-
veniences for passengers and storage
for mail and express are available, not
forgetting the necessary operating per-
sonnel and equipment.
“And while the cities are providing
the air terminals the government will be
providing the emergency landing fields
where needed, surveying and mapping
the air routes, licensing pilots, as it now
licenses ship navigators, supplying air
charts to pilots and other air personnel,
and providing lighthouses for the air
in the same way as it does to safeguard
maritime navigation. And in doing
this the taxpayers of the country will
not be called on to pay a subsidy as is
the case in precisely every other coun-
try in the world.
“All this is being done at this very
hour, and here I want to add a word of
praise for Mr. MacCracken, the Assist-
ant Secretary in charge of aviation. He
has done and is doing a wonderful work.
We are going to have a real air service
in the United States.”
Military Aspect of Program.
“What of the military phase of the
problem in so far as it relates to this
country ?”
“Perhaps more than in any other
field,” Mr. Hoover replied, “the mili-
tary and naval air pilot has been the
pioneer. We recall that in 1919 the
NC-4, manned and piloted by naval of-
ficers, crossed the Atlantic by air, and
in the same year there was a transcon-
tinental contest in which sixty-four
army planes competed over a course ap-
proximately 5,400 miles in length.
“Another year passed and army avia-
tors flew from New York to Alaska and
returned; then last year Commander
Byrd flew a commercial plane over the
North Pole, and we have just acclaimed
(Continued on Page 4, Column 5.)
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Habermacher, Mrs. J. C. & Lane, Ella E. Shiner Gazette (Shiner, Tex.), Vol. 34, No. 40, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 11, 1927, newspaper, August 11, 1927; Shiner, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1144360/m1/2/?q=music: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Shiner Public Library.