You might want to buy Tom Russell's "Song of the West" CD just to get "Hallie Lonigan," even though a guy wrote it...

"Alone with two young kids to raise, out on the western plains
My children harmonized with wolves, and sang just like the rain.
But hauling hay and water were the desperate daily facts,
And the years have carved their memories in the muscles of my back.

.......................

Then I married for convenience' sake, a trader from in town,
A blacksmith, name of Charlie Hawk, who'd court me on his rounds.
But he'd paw me like a wolverine, and there was cheatin' in his blood;
He fell upon my butcher knife and crawled off in the mud..."

Peter.