49. The Ruptured Cowboy (Maria)

Five texts from Michigan State and one from Indiana University
have been deposited in the folklore archives at the latter school, the
earliest of these dating from 1946,

The theme here is so identical to that of "The Gay Caballero"
that at first glance one tends to suspect more than a merely coinci-
dent relationship between the two, although this probably is not the
case. "The Gay Caballero" is much longer and more fully developed in
regard to the plot than is "The Ruptured Cowboy," as a single line of the
latter song corresponds in its narrative statement to at least one entire
verse of the former. To illustrate the matter more concretely, a variant
of "The Gay Caballero" is printed below, and is then followed with a
fairly complete text of "The Ruptured Cowboy":

[[removed "Gay Caballero" song]]

much more condensed and concise "Ruptured Cowboy," sung to the tune
"Rancho Grande," is nevertheless remarkably similar in plot:

I am a ruptured cowboy,
I have the gonorrhea—syph too.
I got it from Maria
Underneath the apple treah.

And now it's hard to peeah—shit too.
I'm going to have the operation.
The one they call the casteration. (2)

(2) Collected by Merrill and Virginia Walker at Michigan State in
1946. According to their informant, there are still other additional
lines which were not recalled at the time.



49 A. Clay McMullen sang this variant on December 6, 1963. He learned
it in a Phoenix, Arizona high school in 1959 or I960,

My name is Pancho Villa,
I got the gonorrhea.
I got it from Maria,
It hurts me when I peeah.

49 B. This fragment is interesting for the reason that it is not
set to the "Rancho Grande" tune, but has been reworked so as to parody
the popular song, "I Just Met A Girl Named MariaJ' from the movie, "West
Side Story," This undoubtedly is a very recent change since the wide-
spread familiarity of the latter melody has only come about in the past
four or five years. This text was collected from Jon Kwitny, formerly
of the University of Missouri, who indicated that he first heard it on
that campus about 1960-62,

Maria, I just met a girl named Maria.
She gave me gonorrhea,
But she gave it to me freeah, Maria.

pgs 261-263, An Annotated Field Collection of Songs from the American
College Student Oral Tradition by Richard Reuss.


See here: https://archive.org/details/1965annotatedfieldcollectionofsongs/page/260/mode/1up?q=ruptured