Camptown Shakers: Music
O! Lud Gals
(Camptown Shakers)
Published by Chas. Keith 1843. This song rambles across wide territory following one man’s quest to find a wife and the good life on the frontier.
Its up the rope and down the cable,
Forty horses in the stable
First an injun then a squaw,
gwine away to the Arkansas
Oh lud gals, gimme chaw tobacco
Oh lud gals fotch along the whiskey
Makes my head swim when I get a little tipsy
Vinegar shoes and paper stockings,
bring to me Miss Polly Hawkins
My wife's dead and I'm a widder,
all the way from the roaring river
If I had a wife and a little baby,
I'd support her like a lady
Gods of war and little fishes,
Earthen plates and pewter dishes
Cowhide shoes and buckskin britches
bring me the gal that sewed the stitches
Prettiest thing in all creation is a
little yaller gal in de wild goose nation
Pompey Smash and ole Pete Acre,
two best men in human nature
Hop the creek and roll in the river,
two oberseers to one little nigger
All the way from the injun nation,
big corn crib on a little plantation
My wife's dead I'll get annuder,
pretty little black gal just like the udder
Blow away gentle breezes
down among the cinammon treeses
There I set 'long wis de muses,
mending my old boots and shoeses