Cowboy's Dream, The

DESCRIPTION: "One night as I lay on the prairie... I wondered if ever a cowboy Could drift to that sweet by and by.... Roll on, roll on, roll on, little dogies, roll on, roll on...." A cowboy's reflections on the afterlife, with the images cast in herding terms
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1893 ("Cow-Boy Life in Texas"); Will Barnes thought he learned the words in 1886 or 1887
KEYWORDS: cowboy religious dream
FOUND IN: US(Ap,SE,So,SW) Canada(Ont)
REFERENCES (28 citations):
Randolph 185, "One Night As I Lay on the Prairie" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 516, "The Great Round-Up" (1 text)
Hudson-FolksongsOfMississippi 95, p. 227, "Cowboy Meditations" (1 text)
Hudson-FolkTunesFromMississippi 44, "Cowboy Meditations" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore, pp. 14-17, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text, 1 tune)
Moore/Moore-BalladsAndFolkSongsOfTheSouthwest 146, "The Cowboys Dream" (1 text, 1 tune)
Larkin-SingingCowboy, pp. 105-108, "The Cowboy's Heaven" (1 text, 1 tune)
Thorp/Fife-SongsOfTheCowboys VI, pp. 66-86 (19), "Grand Round-Up" (9 texts, 3 tunes); Thorp/Logsdon-SongsOfTheCowboys, pp. 40-41, "The Cowboy's Dream"; pp. 75-77, "The Great Round-Up" (2 texts)
Fife/Fife-CowboyAndWesternSongs 122, "The Grand Roundup" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Finger-FrontierBallads, pp. 101-103, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text, 1 tune)
Abernethy-SinginTexas, pp 155-157, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax/Lomax-FolkSongUSA 61, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax/Lomax-AmericanBalladsAndFolkSongs, pp. 410-411, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text, tune references; this appears to combine "The Cowboy's Dream" and "The Last Great Round-Up")
Pound-AmericanBalladsAndSongs, 75, pp. 166-167, "Cowboy Song" (1 text)
Tinsley-HeWasSinginThisSong, pp. 112-116, "The Cowboy's Sweet By-and-By" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, pp. 428-429, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text, 1 tune)
ArkansasWoodchopper, pp. 6-8, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greenway-FolkloreOfTheGreatWest, pp. 192-194, "Sweet By-and-by Revised" (2 texts)
Brumley-LamplitinTimeInTheValley 40, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text, 1 tune)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 3309-331, "Roll On, Little Dogies" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 112, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text)
Saffel-CowboyPoetry, p. 182-183, "The Cowboy's Dream" (1 text)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 54, 251, "The Cowboy's Sweet Bye and Bye" (notes only)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsNThings, p. 78, "The Cowboy's Sweet Bye and Bye" (1 text, tune referenced)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsPopularEdition, p. 41, "The Cowboy's Sweet Bye and Bye" (1 text, tune refrerenced)
BoyScoutSongbook1997, pp. 74-75, "The Cowboy's Sweet Bye and Bye" (1 text, tune referenced)
DT, COWDREAM*
ADDITIONAL: John I. White, _Git Along, Little Dogies: Songs and Songmakers of the American West_, 1975 (page references are to the 1989 University of Illinois Press edition), pp. 62-72, "Will Barnes and 'The Cowboy's Sweet By and By'" (1 text plus various excerpts and a history of the song)
Roud #4453
RECORDINGS:
Jules [Verne] Allen, "The Cowboy's Dream" (Victor V-40178, 1929; on AuthCowboys)
Harry Jackson, "Roll On, Little Dogies" (on HJackson1)
Bradley Kincaid, "The Cowboy's Dream" (Decca 5048, 1934)
Vernon Dalhart, "The Cowboy's Dream" (Romeo 431. 1927)
McGinty's Oklahoma Cowboy Band, "Cowboy's Dream" (OKeh 45057, 1926)
Goebel Reeves, "The Cowboy's Dream" (Melotone 12214/Conqueror 7742, 1931)
George Riley (The Yodeling Rustler), "The Cowboy's Dream" (Romeo 5037, n.d. but probably c. 1930; Conqueror 7742, 1931)
Carl T. Sprague, "The Cowboy's Dream" (Victor 20122, 1926; Montgomery Ward M-4343, 1933)
Westerners [pseud. for Massey Family], "The Cowboy's Dream" (Perfect 13008, 1934)
Marc Williams, "The Cowboy's Dream" (Brunswick 244, 1928; Supertone S-2054, 1930)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" (tune) and references there
cf. "THe Last Great Round-Up" (subject)
cf. "Sweet By and By"
NOTES [127 words]: An extended discussion of the authorship of this piece is found in Thorp/Fife-SongsOfTheCowboys. What it seems to boil down to is that several people played a role, and none can claim the whole thing.
It was apparently built around "(In the) Sweet By and By" (so, e.g., Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore, citing Ross Santee to the effect the words were by Will C. Barnes), but I've always heard it sung to "My Bonnie," and White reports that as the original tune. It's not the ArkansasWoodchopper tune, though.
As the Lomax/Lomax-AmericanBalladsAndFolkSongs entry shows, the distinction between this and "The Last Great Round-Up" is very hard to draw; best to see both. Roud lumps them, and I don't blame him, but I think there was a deliberate rewrite along the way. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: R185

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