The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #43566   Message #640348
Posted By: Joe_F
01-Feb-02 - 09:31 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Songs of Haywire Mack / Harry McClintock
Subject: RE: Haywire Mac Songs
Abby: No, it's not that one, tho I suppose borrowing a wife counts as raunchy. Lomax says:

In _The Big Rock Candy Mountains_, McClintock tells how a jocker lured a country boy away from home by telling him `ghost stories' about lemonade springs and such. After many a thirsty mile the punk is disillusioned.

The punk rolled up his big blue eyes
And said to the jocker, `Sandy,
I've hiked and hiked and wandered, too,
But I ain't seen any candy.
I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore,
I'll be God-damned if I hike any more,
To be --------------------------------------
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.'

Fifty years of re-working by other balladeers have obscured the raw irony of McClintock's original song, but have graced it with age-old Utopian fantasies which inspired the song _Oleana_....

-- _The Folk Songs of North America_, p. 411

The dash is Mr Lomax's.