The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #48574 Message #2919747
Posted By: Jim Dixon
03-Jun-10 - 10:31 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Hunter's Return (Fess Parker)
Subject: Lyr Add: HUNTER'S RETURN (Fess Parker)
Thanks to Allen W., I was able to find the song, download it, and transcribe it.
HUNTER'S RETURN is on an album "Cowboy and Indian Songs" by Fess Parker, released 1957 by Walt Disney Records. I downloaded the album from here and transcribed the song myself:
HUNTER'S RETURN
As sung by Fess Parker*
1. A young Indian mother with anxious eyes
Sat by a cradle 'neath sullen skies.
Her warrior, her hunter, had not returned,
But bravely to her babe she turned.
CHORUS: High flies the goose, my little papoose.
The bright apple falls from the bough.
The trembling leaf knows the north wind's a thief,
But you will sleep somehow, somehow,
But you will sleep somehow.
2. [SPOKEN] The frost of the wind chilled the empty rack
Where once had hung meat and corn by the sack.
With fear in her heart, she turned to the child,
And as wolves closed in, she sang and she smiled.
3. Then a knife she drew from her tattered shawl,
Watched the brown-eyed child clutch a sheepskin doll.
The wolves would make certain he didn't know.
If he ever returned, they would lie 'neath the snow.
4. Then faint on the wind a hi-yi-yo,
The clip-clop of burros patient and slow.
Her warrior hunter at last had returned.
There was food; there were furs; to the babe she turned.
[* I was unable to find any confirmation that he wrote it.]
Yikes! This lullaby might be comforting to a baby, but it ain't comforting to me. What exactly was she gonna do with that knife?