The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #50119   Message #28223
Posted By: Roger Himler
13-May-98 - 09:50 PM
Thread Name: ADD/Origins: the Texas Ranger / Texas Rangers
Subject: Lyr Add: THE TEXAS RANGERS
THE TEXAS RANGERS

Come all you Texas Rangers, wherever you may be,
I hope you'll pay attention and listen unto me,
My name is nothing extry, the truth to you I'll tell,
I am a roving Ranger and I'm sure I wish you well.

'Twas at the age of sixteen I joined this jolly band,
We marched from San Antonio unto the Rio Grande,
Our captain, he informed us, perhaps he thought it right,
'Before you reach the station, boys, I'm sure you'll have to fight.'

I saw the Injuns coming, I heard them give a yell,
My feelings at this moment no human tongue can tell,
I saw their glittering lances and their arrows round me flew,
And all my strength it left me and all my courage, too.

We fought full nine hours before the strife was o'er,
The like of dead and wounded I never saw before,
And when the sun was rising and the Indians they had fled,
We loaded up our rifles and counted up our dead.

Now all of us were wounded, our noble captain slain,
The sun was shining sadly across the bloody plain,
Sixteen brave Rangers as ever roamed the West,
Were buried by their comrades with arrows in their breast.

'Twas then I thought of mother, who to me in tears did say,
"To you they are all strangers, with me you'd better stay.'
I thought that she was childish and that she did not know,
My mind was fixed on ranging and I was bound to go.

I have seen the fruits of ramblin', I know its hardships well,
I have crossed the Rocky Mountains, rode down the streets of Hell,
I have been in the great Southwest, where wild Apaches roam,
And I tell you from experience, you'd better stay at home.

From *Folk Songs of North America* by Alan Lomax. He says the song is related to Catnach broadside, *Nancy of Yarmouth*, became current about the time of the Battle of the Alamo, 1835, and spead back north-east and east, so it is now current among folk singers in New England and Southern Mountains.

The story comes from the early experience of the Texas Rangers when they were armed with rifles. The Rangers were *out-gunned* by the Indians who could shoot their arrows multiple times in the period it took the Rangers to reload their single-shot muskets. In 1840, the Rangers became armed with the Colt six-shooter. It evened the odds considerably. The song was sung by both sides in the Civil War.

Roger in Baltimore