Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint

Subject: Song Title please ?
From: Deckman
Date: 27 Jun 15 - 05:39 PM

For some stoooopid reason, I can't recall the correct title of the American cowboy song that goes:

"Old Bill Jones, Had two daughters and a song,
One went to Denver, and the other went wrong,

Ride around Little Doggies, Ride around, so Slow ... etc"

Can anyone remind me please? Thanks .... bob(deckman)nelson

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 27 Jun 15 - 05:44 PM

I'll try hitting the right button this time ... and I've only just started on the Jim Beam:

I Ride an Old Paint, lead an old Dan
I'm goin' to Montana to throw the Hoolihan etc etc "I Ride An Old Paint"

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?
From: Deckman
Date: 27 Jun 15 - 05:51 PM

OF COURSE ... STOOPID ME! I don't often get "blocked" like this, but I sure did today. Does this ever happen to anyone else? bob

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Jun 15 - 07:27 PM

I sing it "two daughters and a son" - I think the one-off rhyme is intentional.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Deckman
Date: 27 Jun 15 - 09:14 PM

Thanks joe ... and "Hootenanny" ... bob

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jun 15 - 04:35 PM

Deckman:

"I Ride an Old Paint" encourages dogies to ride around, not doggies. Different species altogether.

Woof!

Love,

A

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Jun 15 - 08:49 PM

You can herd dogies with doggies but not weiner doggies.

"Dogie", n., a scrubby calf that has not wintered well and is anemic from the scant food of the cold weather, also a dogey...from "Dothoighte {fada over the second 'o'], hard to rear, hard to fatten (as a calf); a sickly hard-to-feed calf....

                --Daniel Quinn, How the Irish Invented Slang: the secret language of the crossroads (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007), p. 133.

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Deckman
Date: 28 Jun 15 - 10:12 PM

picky picky picky ...

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Jun 15 - 10:44 PM

I think it's called 'I'm Leaving Cheyenne,' because it goes

I ride old Paint, I lead old Dan,
I'm goin to Montan for to throw the houlihan.
Goodbye, old Paint, I'm leavin Cheyenne.

The houlihan was some kind of throw made with a lasso or lariat.

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 01:07 AM

I think that might be a conflation of two songs, Leenia? The "Riding Old Paint" I know doesn't mention leaving Cheyenne but there is another song by that name. Unless I am just confused, which has occasionally happened.

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: BrooklynJay
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 03:07 AM

Amos, you are not confused; they are indeed two different songs.

As far as I Ride An Old Paint, I usually sing:

Old Bill Jones had two daughters and a song,
One went to college and the other went wrong.

While I don't think it's literally word-for-word, I believe it's quite similar to what I found in Carl Sandburg's American Songbag. I don't have the book handy at this moment, so I can't speak with absolute certainty.


Jay

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 08:16 AM

Rap, while your distinction between "dogie" and "doggie" is correct, my professional colleagues regard Cassidy's etymologies as fanciful and often insupportable.

The Irish, of course, did not invent slang.

Like that of "gizmo," the derivation of "dogie" is not known.

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 11:25 AM

Nevertheless, they're interesting. Some I can agree with, some I can agree with but only up to a point, and some I can't agree with at all. Word derivation is too complex to be left only to the OED, Webster's, and that herd of ilk, and offered alternatives should be carefully considered before being rejected.

A cognate or an echoic word is always possible, but I'd want to see more evidence besides Cassidy's "it has to be this because: derivation unknown." It's also possible that someone was working with something and said, "Hand me that...that...that...that gizmo over there."

I am not by any stretch an Irish speaker (hopefully I'll know more in three weeks or so) but when I showed Cassidy's book to relatives-by-marriage who ARE native speakers of Irish they said that some of the derivations are certainly possible. And Cassidy is correct: many native Irish speakers did end up in the US, including my wife's grandfather.

(My folks came from either the Netherlands or Germany, depending on who won the war.)

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 11:45 AM

Oops. I did mix up two songs.

Word derivations, like weather reports and horse races, are a matter of probability. When I consider the number of Irish immigrants to America, I think that the probability of 'dogie', an orphaned calf, being related to 'dothoighte,' a sickly calf, is about 90%.

In my experience, half the letters in an Irish word like 'dothoighte' are silent, so it might be a lot closer to 'dogie' than it looks.

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: pdq
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 11:54 AM

...note that "I Ride an Old Paint" does not mention Cheyenne:


"I Ride An Old Paint" by Woody Guthrie.

I ride an old Paint and I lead an old Dan
Goin' to Montana to throw the houlihan
Feed them in the coulees, then water in the draw
Their tails are all matted and their backs are all raw

Ride around, little dogies, ride around them slow
For the fiery and snuffy are raring to go

Old Bill Jones had a daughter and a son
Son went to college and his daughter went wrong
His wife got killed in a free-for-all fight
Still he keeps singing from morning 'til night

Ride around, little dogies, ride around them slow
For the fiery and snuffy are raring to go

When I die take my saddle from the wall
Put it onto my pony, lead him out of his stall
Tie my bones on his back and turn our faces to the west
We'll ride the prairies that we love the best

Ride around, little dogies, ride around them slow
For the fiery and snuffy are raring to go

I've worked in a town and I've worked in the farms
All i've got to shows just this muscle in my arm
Blisters on my feet, callous on my hand
And I'm goin' to Montana to throw the houlihan

Ride around little dogies, ride around them slow
for the firey and snuffy are raring to go

Ride around little dogies, ride around them slow
For the firey and snuffy are raring to go

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Mark Ross
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 03:45 PM

Lighter,
"Dogie" comes from doughguts, an orphaned calf will exhibit a swollen belly from lack of nutrition (not having a mother cow to give it milk).

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 04:06 PM

That is certainly possible.

Part of the problem with "dothoighte" is that it doesn't sound like "dogie" at all.

Even with "silent letters."

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 04:14 PM

Mark Ross above.

That's what I've read also. A calf, separated from it's mother too early and eating grass before its digestive system can handle it, referred to as a "doughguts" or "dough belly."

I can't swear to it, but I think I read that in one of the Lomax books.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Reinhard
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 04:18 PM

To muddle the waters a bit more, on Woody Guthrie's Folkways album Struggle there is a song "Get Alomg Little Doggies", not "Dogies". But I'd guess that's just an error of the editor.

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 06:16 PM

Just to add to the fun:

This spring herding promoted much discussion of stock that had not "weathered well" and of "dogies" and "dobes," these last being calves or yearling cattle that were still scrubby and anemic from the scant food of the cold months.
         --Philip Ashton Rollins, The Cowboy: his characteristics, his equipment, and his part in the development of the West. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007; Scribners, 1924, p. 163.

According to Black Cowboys of the Old West by Tricia Martineau Wagner (Twodot, 2011), the song "Good-bye, Old Paint" was composed by Charley Willis (1847-?), pages 110-124.

I don't find anything on either one in Katie Lee's Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle.

Subject: RE: Song Title please ?-I Ride an Old Paint
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 06:52 PM

Goodbye Old Paint Pharis and Jason Romero

I Ride an Old Paint Tim O'Brien