Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads

<p class="tit-song">LIFE IN A HALF-BREED SHACK <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page386" name="page386"></SPAN>(p. 386)</span></p> <p>'Tis life in a half-breed shack,<br/> The rain comes pouring down;<br/> "Drip" drops the mud through the roof,<br/> And the wind comes through the wall.<br/> A tenderfoot cursed his luck<br/> And feebly cried out "yah!"</p> <p class="add1em">Refrain:<br/> Yah! Yah! I want to go home to my ma!<br/> Yah! Yah! this bloomin' country's a fraud!<br/> Yah! Yah! I want to go home to my ma!</p> <p>He tries to kindle a fire<br/> When it's forty-five below;<br/> He aims to chop at a log<br/> And amputates his toe;<br/> He hobbles back to the shack<br/> And feebly cries out "yah"!</p> <p>He gets on a bucking cayuse<br/> And thinks to flourish around,<br/> But the buzzard-head takes to bucking<br/> And lays him flat out on the ground.<br/> As he picks himself up with a curse,<br/> He feebly cries out "yah"!</p> <p>He <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page387" name="page387"></SPAN>(p. 387)</span> buys all the town lots he can get<br/> In the wrong end of Calgary,<br/> And he waits and he waits for the boom<br/> Until he's dead broke like me.<br/> He couldn't get any tick<br/> So he feebly cries out "yah"!</p> <p>He couldn't do any work<br/> And he wouldn't know how if he could;<br/> So the police run him for a vag<br/> And set him to bucking wood.<br/> As he sits in the guard room cell,<br/> He feebly cries out "yah"!</p> <p>Come all ye tenderfeet<br/> And listen to what I say,<br/> If you can't get a government job<br/> You had better remain where you be.<br/> Then you won't curse your luck<br/> And cry out feebly "yah"!</p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />