Well, yeah, but the song had come a long way from the original. You might as well decide that his baby was wrapped up in white linen, even though there's no suggestion of it in SJI, or that he wanted the fifes playing lowly, but had forgotten to mention it.

Or that the dying cowboy who had been "gunned down" had been dying of syphilis anyway, and someone in the bar had told a joke about a syphilitic, and that enraged him, and he had pulled his gun, and, and .....