Gene: Many thanks for a good find.

Now I know why people tended to giggle at this one...seems both the composers and Perry played it for laughs!

Believe it or not, I heard this sung absolutely straight (minus the "you licked me" final line) in Jackson, Wyoming in 1959 and have always sung it so. It can, if not joked around with, be one of the most blood-freezingly lonesome songs the west has got to offer.

The words I particularly wanted to check were, as I heard them:

1st verse:
When the hoot owl hoots his tooin'
to the wail of the nipwick hen
and the jingpung chirps etc...

So I wasn't too far off after all. But that nipwick hen and that chirping chink funk or whatever-it-is are pure mystery to me. I wonder whether the poster of these lyrics was going by what he heard, rather than by any official source, like sheet music?

There are a couple other differences in the version from the guy who sang it to me, Dick Barker of Jackson Hole:

2nd verse:
Which ain't no more than right
But when the rope and saddle is your life

4th verse
kettle = cattle, I think

Cho: Cowboy blue

Big mystery still!

All you westernologists out there: If anyone knows what a "nip wick hen" or a "chink funk" might be, I would be very interested to know.

Bob