. On the other hand, some pamphlets prized by collectors
had as well not have been written. Here is the full title of an example:
_An Aged Wanderer, A Life Sketch of J. M. Parker, A Cowboy of the
Western Plains in the Early Days_. "Price 40 cents. Headquarters,
Elkhorn Wagon Yard, San Angelo, Texas." It was printed about 1923. When
Parker wrote it he was senile, and there is no evidence that he was
ever possessed of intelligence. The itching to get into print does not
guarantee that the itcher has anything worth printing.

Some of the best reminiscences have been pried out of range men. In 1914
the Wyoming Stock Growers Association resolved a Historical Commission
into existence. A committee was appointed and, naturally, one man did
the work. In 1923 a fifty-five-page pamphlet entitled _Letters from
Old Friends and Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association_ was
printed at Cheyenne. It is made up of unusually informing and pungent
recollections by intelligent cowmen.

22. Cowboy Songs and Other Ballads

{illust. Lyrics = Kind friends, if you will listen, A story I will tell
A-bout a final bust-up, That happened down in Dell.}

COWBOY SONGS and ballads are generally ranked alongside Negro spirituals
as being the most important of America's contributions to folk song. As
compared with the old English and Scottish ballads, the cowboy and
all other ballads of the American frontiers generally sound cheap and
shoddy. Since John A. Lomax brought out his collection in 1910, cowboy
songs have found their way into scores of songbooks, have been
recorded on hundreds of records, and have been popularized, often--and
naturally--without any semblance to cowboy style, by thousands of radio
singers. Two general anthologies are recommended especially for the
cowboy songs they contain: _American Ballads and Folk Songs_, by John
A. and Alan Lomax, Macmillan, New York, 1934; _The American Songbag_, by
Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1927.

LARRIN, MARGARET. _Singing Cowboy_ (with music), New York, 1931. OP.

LOMAX, JOHN A., and LOMAX, ALAN. _Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier
Ballads_, Macmillan, New York, 1938. This is a much added-to and revised
form of Lomax's 1910 collection, under the same title. It is the most
complete of all anthologies. More than any other man, John A. Lomax is
responsible for having made cowboy songs a part of the common heritage
of America. His autobiographic _Adventures of a Ballad