What I find so far is a book of Dad's called He Was Singin' This Song by Jim Bob Tinsley, with forewards by Gene Autry and S. Omar Barker. "A collection of forty-eight traditional songs of the American cowboy, with words, music, pictures, and stories." University Presses of Florida, Orlando. 1981.

In the index, the citation for "The Dying Cowboy" directs you to go look up "O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" (80-82). There were lots of variations, according to this article, and one image example included in this article is the cover art of the sheet music that came out in 1907, "Words and Music by William Jossey."

I won't transcribe two full pages of text here, but the discussion of this song is on pages 80 - 82. Here are the first few interesting tidbits (I'll scan and save these as a PDF to email if anyone wants one. PM me and I'll send it.) I don't know which song came first, but clearly, the Lone Prairie song makes liberal use of the earlier poem. I'd hazard a guess that the story in Joe's song makes reference to the earlier maritime poem discussed in this article.

Perhaps the best-known of all cowboy songs is not a cowboy original. "O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," expressing the last wishes of a dying cowboy, is an adaptation of a poem about a burial at sea. In the mid-1800s, in a period of less than twenty years, a national magazine printed three poems with the "bury me not" theme, all involving marine burials.

The only one of them to endure was written by Edwin Hubbell Chapin, a Universalist clergyman in Boston. Chapin studied law at Tufts University for a time, but he adopted Universalism and was ordained to the ministry in 1838. A year later, his poem, "The Ocean-Buried," appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger¹. In spite of the youth's dying pleas not to be buried in the deep deep sea, his friends were unable to honor his last request. Cowboy lyrics, which retained many passages word for word, were later developed from Chapin's poem.

¹ E.H. Chapin, "The Ocean Buried" Southern Literary Messenger 5, no 9 (September 1839):615-16.


Here is the song as it was published in the book:

O BURY ME NOT ON THE LONE PRAIRIE

"O bury me not on the lone prairie,"
These words came low and mournfully.
From the pallid lips of a youth who lay
On his dying bed at the close of day.

He had wasted and pined till o'er his brow
Death's shades were slowly gathering now.
He thought of home and loved ones nigh,
As the cowboys gathered to see him die.

"O bury me not on the lone prairie,
Where the coyotes howl and the wind blows free.
In a narrow grave just six by three--
O bury me not on the lone prairie."

It matters not, I've oft been told,
Where the body lies when the heart grows cold.
Yes grant, o grant, this wish to me,
O bury me not on the lone prairie."

I've always wished to be laid when I died
In a little churchyard on the green hillside.
By my father's grave there let me be,
O bury me not on the lone prairie."

"I wish to lie where a mother's prayer
And a sister's tear will mingle there.
Where friend can come and weep o'er me.
O bury me not on the lone prairie."

"For there's another whose tears will shed
For the one who lies in a prairie bed.
It breaks my heart to think of her now,
She has curled these locks; she has kissed this brow."

"O bury me not. . . " And his voice failed there.
But they took no heed to his dying prayer.
In a narrow grave, just six by three,
They buried him there on the lone prairie.

And the cowboys now as they roam the plain,
For they marked the spot where his bones were lain,
Fling a handful of roses o'er his grave
With a prayer to God, his soul to save.