Department of English
University of Nebraska Studies in Language, Literature, and Criticism
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TITLE:
Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads
AUTHOR(S):
John A. Lomax M.A., University of Texas
DOCUMENT TYPE: Article
New York: Sturgis & Walton Company, 1911
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ABSTRACT:
Out in the wild, far-away places of the big and
still unpeopled west,- in the caņons along the
Rocky Mountains, among the mining camps of Nevada
and Montana, and on the remote cattle ranches
of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona,- yet survives
the Anglo-Saxon ballad spirit that was active in
secluded districts in England and Scotland even after
the coming of Tennyson and Browning. This spirit
is manifested both in the preservation of the English
ballad and in the creation of local songs. Illiterate
people, and people cut off from newspapers and
books, isolated and lonely,- thrown back on primal
resources for entertainment and for the expression of
emotion,- utter themselves through somewhat the
same character of songs as did their forefathers of
perhaps a thousand years ago. In some such way
have been made and preserved the cowboy songs and
other frontier ballads contained in this volume.