The Game of Coon-Can: W.F.B (MT) 1925 Gordon
[From Gordon; Adventure Magazine, December 20, 1925. Reprinted by Reed Smith in 1928, SCB. Gordon's notes (from Smith) follow. Cf. Poor Boy (Blue Sky Boys). This is important because it predates Poole's 1926 version, Highwayman Man.
R. Matteson 2015]
Here is the best of a number of different versions of "The Game of Coon-Can " that have come in to the department during the past two years. It comes from W. F. B., who picked it up " from a 'blowed-in-the-glass' stiff in the 'jungles' at Livingston, Montana." It would be hard to find a better illustration of how many folk-songs are undoubtedly created. The story is simple and rather conventional; it includes situations and incidents that have often been sung in other familiar songs. So whenever the singer comes to one of these familiar incidents or situations, he falls back on the words of the other song. This is natural and probably almost unconscious.
We do the same thing when we begin our fairy stories, as did our fathers before us. "Now once upon a time there lived a king who had two daughters." . .
In the song below you will find stanzas lifted almost bodily from "The Boston Burglar," "The Rambling Boy," the old ballad of "The Maid Freed From the Gallows" (often called "The Hangman's Tree"), and from several others. Yet the result is far from being mere patchwork; it is an effective and on the whole a new story pressing into service a number of old stanzas.
"The Game of Coon-Can "- Text of W. F. B. learned in Montana before 1925.
I went down to play a hand of coon-can,
I could not play my hand,
For I kept thinking of the girlie I loved
Ran away with another man.
Ran away with another man, poor boy,
Ran away with another man.
For I kept thinking of the girlie I loved
Ran away with another man.
I went down to the old depot
Just to watch the trains roll by;
I thought I saw the girlie I loved -
Hung down my head and cried.
The night was dark and stormy
And it surely looked like rain;-
I had not a friend in the whole wide world,
And nobody knew my name.
I caught a freight to Boston town -
I'd already searched the west -
For I was bent on finding
The girl that I loved best.
I landed in a fair little city
And there I found my pal;
I shot him once right through the heart
Just because he stole my gal.
The jury found me guilty,
And the Clerk he wrote it down;
The judge he passed the sentence on me,
And now I'm going to the penitentiary.
"Oh, say there, Mr.Hangman,
Won't you wait just a little while?
I think I see the girlie I loved,
And she's come for many a mile.
"Sweetheart, have you brought me silver?
Sweetheart, have you brought me gold?
Or have you come to see me hung -
On yonder hangman's pole?"
"Yes, George, I've brought you silver,
And a stocking full of gold; -
I could not bear to see you die
On yonder hangman's pole."
She took me in her parlor,
And she cooled me with her fan;
With the tears streaming down her cheeks she said,
"I love my highway-man."