The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #59418 Message #2484484
Posted By: Amos
04-Nov-08 - 10:58 AM
Thread Name: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
Oh, come Californians, now rise up and start
With your guns by your side, in the pre-dawning dark
There's a hanging to do, men, with fire and art,
For Rapaire has been stealing the lines of Bret Harte!
COme down from the Placer, the North Fork, the Scott,
By the Elk and the Noyo leave your claims and you cots,
And fix up your lariats, and ready your knots
For its time that this poem-rustler learns what is what.
From the far Petaluma, where they skiffle for gold,
The American, Bear Creen, and Stanislaus cold,
Came the wild Californians, both ready and bold
To capture Rapaire, and his fate to unfold.
Well the first to espy him was Buffalo Jake,
And out of his kit his loop he did take,
ANd he laid out Rapaire like a quick-frozen hake,
On the cold muddy banks of the Tulare Lake.
Now the varmint was hollering, bout his rights in the law,
When Steamboat Slim gave him a clip to the jaw,
"WHen you lift from Brett Harte, sir, yo're outside the law!"
And outlaws are prime game for hanging, says Maw."
And there's where we leave them, in a terrible twist
The rowdy hard-rock men, and the pale plagiarist,
And if there's a moral here, it's probably this--
Don't steasl from Brett Harte, cuz the boys will get pissed.
Tuolumne Tom Baker
"The Wild Rhymes of the Californians"
Stockton, 1887