The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-08-13

There are travel verses, .On The Yu- kon," "Old Red Hoss Mountain Alas ka.' "The Soul of the Saskatchewan. One of the best of these is "The Land of Annie Laurie.''
 | There are verses of fine and refined sem timent.
 l There are poems of pioneer folk after l the manner of Bret Harte's best. | There are songs of real religious fer l yor. | There is frst-class negro dialect. l In truth there is too much of too many things to make book of what might be called successful verse. Many a poet
 without a great quantity of divine afflatus has made a good (and that, in this com
 mercial day means selling name and fame by consistently striking upon one string.
 By writing always in the same style so that he that runs-and feads-may say:
 This is Riley. Here is Stanton again.
 An, here is our Eugene Field. Cy War
 mans fame had been greater had he
 essayed less variety 1 One serious fault in the makeup of the
 book for which the publishers ITS to
 blame, is the running of one poem after
 another on the same page. That always
 gives cheap. experimental air to new
 book of verse.
 Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Bal
 lads" collected and edited by John A. l Lomax of the University of Texas, l Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University; l with an introduction by Barrett Wen i dell.
 Valuable, if not beautiful, are these
 songs of the ranch, the range the broad prairie. To go over them is like handling
 the specimens in a geologists cabinet.
 Here are the nuggets, the fossils. the
 crude materials of which our world today is made, the specimens upon which our fertilization was built To student, even
 the most careless of folk lore of any pe-
 riod or people, the book appeals strongly. Hardly will such book ever make bid
 for cheap popularity
 l The ballads may seem rude, but they
 are refreshing in their very unsophistica-
 tion as to polite civilization. They are wonderfully crude, but there is
 the swing of long galops and rollickine
 roundups in them. Here is part of one;
 they are like the poems of all crude peo- | ple immensely long,: The bawl of a steer 1 To the cowboys ear 1 Is music of sweetest strain; l And the yelping notes Of the grey cayotes 1 To him are a glad refrain. And his jolly songs l Speed him along, l As he thinks of the little gal | With the golden hair Who is waiting there l At the bars of the home corral. The book presents the cowboy in verse at every known vocation and occupation Lie ho n,
 "The Cowboy at Church." '"rhe Cowboy s Dream" "The Dying Cowboy" Tho Cow boys Prayer Here are the stanzas of the last named:
 Now, oh Lord. please lend me thine ear, The prayer of cattle man to hear, No doubt the prayers may seem strange, | But T want you to bless our cattle range.
 Bless the round-ups year by year, And don't forget the growing steer;
 Water the land with brooks and .ilis
 For my cattle that roam thousand hills. Prairie fires won't you please stor?
 Let thunder roll and water drop. l It frightens me to see the smoke; Unless it's stopped I'll go dead broke.
 As you, my Lord, my herd behold, | It represents sacks of gold
 I think at least five cents a pound Will be the price of beef the year around
 One thing more and then I'm through
 Instead of one calf, give my cows two.
 I may pray different from other men.
 But I've had my say, and now, Amen.
 To many of the songs there is music
 given, as The Dying Cowboy" "rhe
 Days of Forty-Nine." Home On :he
 Range "The Old Chisholm Trail." and
 others Many of the verses are. bits oi