The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #52935   Message #863311
Posted By: Joe Offer
10-Jan-03 - 01:45 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Rosemary Lane (aka Home Dearie Home)
Subject: ADD: Button Willow Tree
I came across this gem while looking for versions of "Bell Bottom Trousers." Ohrlin refers to it as a "cowboy version of an old English sailor song," and says he learned it from Roy Mack in Arkansas in 1965.

THE BUTTON WILLOW TREE

The puncher being cold, he went up to bed.
He asked for a candle to light his way to bed.
She showed him up to bed like a good girl should.
He said, "Young lady, will you go to bed, too?"

CHORUS
It's home to your home, wherever you may be,
It's home to your home, to your own country,
Where the oak and the ash and the button willow tree
And the lark sings gaily in his own country.

Early in the morning the puncher arose.
He filled her apron with silver and with gold.
"With silver in your pocket and gold in your purse,
If you get into trouble you can hire you a nurse."
CHORUS

"Oh, if it's a girl, pat her curly head
And remember the night when with me you went to bed
Oh, if it's a girl, bounce her on your knee
And tell her of her daddy who is far across the sea.

"If it's a boy, call him Willie Lee,
And when he's twenty-one you can send him o'er to me.
With his boots and his chaps and his Gallup saddle new
I'll make him punch cows like his daddy used to do.
CHORUS

Source: The Hell Bound-Train: A Cowboy Songbook (Glenn Ohrlin, 1989)