The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #51550   Message #2643728
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
29-May-09 - 01:59 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Home on the Range & Attribution
Subject: Lyr Add: A HOME ON THE RANGE (Will 1909)
In 1909, a year or two prior to Lomax, G. F. Will published lyrics to "A Home on the Range" in Jour. American Folklore, vol. 22, no. 84, Apr-June 1909, pp. 257-258. Questioning older cowboys, Will said: almost universally known in the northwest, though most of the men knew but a few verses."
Some verses differ from those in Lomax. A couple of verses were posted in another thread, but not the complete lyrics. The variation in form shows collection from more than one source.

Lyr. Add; A HOME ON THE RANGE
Coll. of G. F. Will, 1909

1
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.

Chorus.
A home, a home where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.

2
Oh, often at night when summer was bright,
Alone 'neath the stars I would stray;
I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed,
If beauty could excel that of ours.
3
Oh, I love the wild flowers in this bright land of ours,
I love to hear the wild curlew scream
O'er the bluffs and high rocks where the antelope flocks
To graze on the mountain so green.
4
Oh, give me a land where bright diamond sand
Shows in the glittering stream
That glideth along like a graceful white swan,
Like a maid in a lovely day dream.
5
Oh, give me a gale with an orbitual wail,
Where life in its streams busily flow
On the banks of the Platte River,
Where seldom is ever
The poisonous syrangias grow;
Where the air is so pure, the breezes so free,
The zephyrs so balmy at night,
I would not exchange my home on the range
For another, be it ever so bright.
6
The prairie all checkered with buffalo paths,
Where once they roamed proudly to and fro;
But now they've grown dim
Where hunters have been,
And the cowboys have laid them so low.
The red-men pressed in these parts of the West,
And likely they ne'er will return,
For the farmers they start in search of those parts
Whenever the story they learn.