Subject: ADD Versions: Days of 49
From:
GUEST,Q
Date: 17 Jul 03 - 08:41 PM
Lyr. Add: DAYS OF FORTY-NINE
By Joaquin Miller. Complete text.
We have worked our claims, we have spent our gold,
Our barks are astrand on the bars;
We are battered and old. yet at night we behold
Outcroppings of gold in the stars,
And though few and old, our hearts are bold;
Yet oft do we repine
For the days of old,
For the days of gold-
For the Days of Forty-Nine.
Chorus:
Though battered and old,
Our hearts are bold,
Yet oft do we repine;
For the days of old,
For the days of gold,
For the Days of Forty-Nine.
Where the rabbits play, where the quail all day
Pipe on the chaparral hill,
A few more days and the last of us lays
His pick adide, and all is still.
Chorus:
We are wreck and stray,
We are cast away,
Poor battered old hulks and spars;
But we hope and pray,
On the judgement day,
We shall strike it up in the stars.
Written in the 1880s, the text in The Gold Seekers of the Sierras, 1884, Ch. 7, p. 68, Funk Wagnalls, NY.
Miller may have written more than one version, or the quotation in California Gold, Northern California Folk Music From the Thirties, is incomplete. Charles F. Lummis reproduced the complete poem in "Out West," vol. 18, no. 2, p. 204, 1903.
In the same "Out West," p. 202, Lummis printed a version which tells of Tom Moore.
Lyr. Add: THE DAYS OF FORTY-NINE
You are looking now on old Tom Moore,
A relic of bygone days;
A Bummer, too, they call me now,
But what care I for praise?
For my heart is filled with the days of yore,
And oft I do repine
For the Days of old, and the Days of gold,
And the days of Forty-Nine.
Oh, my heart is filled with the days of yore
And oft I do repine
For the days of old, and the days of gold,
And the days of Forty-Nine.
I had comrades then who loved me well,
A jovial, saucy crew
There were some hard cases, I must confess [,?]
But they were all brave and true;
Who would never flinch, whate'er the pinch [,?]
Who never would fret nor whine,
But like good old bricks they stood the kicks,
In the Days of Forty-Nine.
There was Monte Pete- I'll ne'er forget
The luck he always had.
He would deal for you both day and night,
So long as you had a scad.
He would pay you Draw, he mould [would?] Ante sling,
He would go you a hatful blind
But in a game with Death Pete lost his breath
In the Days of Forty-Nine.
There was New York Jake, a butcher boy,
That was always a-gettin' tight;
Whenever Jake got on a spree,
He was spoiling for a fight.
One day he ran against a knife
In the hands of old Bob Cline,
So over Jake we held a wake,
In the Days of Forty-Nine.
There was Rackensack[?] Jim who could outroar (Prob. Hackensack)
A Buffalo Bull, you bet!
He would roar all night, he would roar all day,
And I b'lieve he's a-roaring yet!
One night he fell in a prospect hole
'Twas a rearing bad design
For in that hole he roared out his soul
In the Days of Forty-Nine.
There was poor lame Ches, a hard old case
Who never did repent.
Ches never missed a single meal,
Nor he never paid a cent.
But poor lame Ches, like all the rest,
Did to Death at last resign,
For all in his bloom he went up the flume
In the Days of Forty-Nine.
And now my comrades all are gone,
No one remains to toast,
They have left me here in my misery,
Like some poor wandering ghost,
And as I go from place to place,
Folks call me a "Traveling Sign"
Saying, "There goes Tom Moore, a Bummer, sure,
From the Days of Forty-Nine."
Lummis, Chas. F., editor, "Out West" vol. 18, no. 2, p. 202, February, 1903.
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