Hmmmm. I can't figure out from the link Jim posted, which edition of Cowboy Songs is at Project Gutenberg. My 1916 edition has exactly the lyrics Jim posted. Q, in your 1938 book, are all eight verses included as I've posted them below? Are they in the same order? Q, do you have the original Put's Golden Songster, or any book other than Lomax that prints the song complete? Any chance we could find the tune? Here are the eight verses I found in Lingenfelter-Dwyer, along with notes compiled from the posts from Jim and Q. Note that there are slight differences in wording. I would guess that Lingenfelter and Dwyer would be an exact transcription of Put, and that Lomax may have been a little less accurate. -Joe-
THE HAPPY MINER (John A. Stone)
I am a happy miner, I love to sing and dance; I wonder what my love would say, if she could see my pants With canvas patches on the knees, and one upon the stern; I'll wear them when I'm digging here, and home when I return.
CHORUS: So I get in a jovial way, I spend my money free, And I've got plenty, will you drink lager beer with me?
She writes about her poodle dog, but never thinks to say, "O, do come home, my honey dear, I'm pining all away." I'll write her half a letter, then give the ink a tip; If that don't bring her to her milk, I'll coolly "let her rip."
They wish to know if I can cook, and what I have to eat; And tell me should I take a cold be sure and soak my feet; But when they talk of cooking, I'm mighty hard to beat - I've made ten thousand loaves of bread the devil could not eat.
I like a lazy partner, so I can take my ease, Lay down and talk of going home, as happy as you please; Without a thing to eat or drink, away from care and grief. I'm fat and saucy, ragged too, and tough as Spanish beef.
The dark-eyed senoritas are very fond of me; You ought to see us throw ourselves when we get on a spree; We are as saucy as a clipper ship dashing round the Horn, Head and tail up like a steer rushing through the corn.
I never changed my fancy shirt, the one I wore away, Until it got so rotten I finally had to say, "Farewell, old standing collar, in all thy pride of starch, I've worn thee from December till the seventeenth of March."
No matter whether rich or poor, I'm happy as a clam; I wish my friends at home could look and see me as I am, With woolen shirt and rubber boots, in mud up to my knees, And lice as large as Chili beans fighting with the fleas.
I'll mine for half an ounce a day, perhaps a little less, But when it comes to China pay, I cannot stand the press; Like thousands there, I'll make a pile, if I make one at all, About the time the allied forces take Sebastopol.
tune- "I Get in a Weaving Way."
source: p. 135, Songs of the American West, Richard E. Lingenfelter and Richard A. Dwyer, University of California Press, 1968.
The song is from "Put's Golden Songster," pp. 43-46, copyright 1858, by John A. Stone [Put], D. E. Appleton & Co., San Francisco.
A companion piece is "The Unhappy Miner," same volume, pp. 36-39, air- "Old Dog Tray." "Happy Miner is also in p. 383-384, John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, 1938, "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads," Revised and Enlarged, The Macmillan Co., NY.